


Some Assembly Required

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Returns, Canon Related, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Idiots in Love, LITERALLY, M/M, Manpain, POV Alternating, Poor Bucky, Poor Tony, Protective Bucky Barnes, Steve Needs a Hug, Steve Rogers Feels, Tags May Change, Tony Feels, Tony Has Issues, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony-centric, de aged Howard Stark, he's actually a good parent, just not to Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:26:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fifteen years ago Howard Stark died, or at least that's what the rest of the world thought. No one knows that an Inhuman named Selene pulled him out of the wreckage and saved him. The process of healing required her to take memories though, and physical years of Howard Stark's life, leaving him with no memory of his previous family and commitments.  </p>
<p>It's been fifteen years since his father's death and almost a year after he escaped the caves in Afghanistan when Tony Stark's life turns upside down three times in a matter of four months. First there was Steve, whom he starts and unlikely relationship with, then Bucky, who was bound to fuck that all up for him, and then Howard Stark... Stone, whoever he was he was a dead ringer for his dead father.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).



> Okay, so technically Inhumans comes out of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D but this fic will by no means centre around the show, just the powers of the one original character (Selene). Also the avengers won't really be a thing? Like this is related to canon in a lot of ways, but centres around Tony/ Howard kissing and making up and Steve/ Tony/ Bucky kissing in general lol. 
> 
> Also shoutout to GoodSourceOfFiber for helping me out with the beginnings of this plot wile watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and thinking up ways to hurt Tony.

“I don’t do weapons anymore,” he tells the irritating blue eyed man who had been practically stalking him for the last week. He even had Pepper shoo him out a few times and people didn’t just ignore Pepper Potts, not even he did and he ignored everyone unless he saw fit not to.

“Oh you’ll be interested in this one, trust me,” he says, following him along despite his very clear disinterest.

He spins around to face the irritating agent, “and why would I be interested in whatever it is you’ve got?” he asks, annoyed and at his wits end with, well, everything. He’s had a very crappy three months and he had no desire to get back in the weapons game because something was _interesting_.

“It’s biological for starts,” the agent says, smiling like he’s actually managed to hook Tony when he hasn’t.

“I didn’t do biological weapons even when I did do weapons,” he points out, he’d be fucking useless and this guy had spent the last week following him basically everywhere? Well that was a waste of everyone’s time.

“Oh you’ll do this one,” he guys says and at the time Tony had no idea how true that was.

*

“Brain waves indicate that he’ll be waking up soon, we don’t really want him to know that… you know, he’s been asleep for seventy years,” Coulson says, looking through the two way glass that separated him from Captain fucking America. He gave Coulson points for being right about being interested, he was definitely interested.

“I’d like to advise against that,” he says, “I can tell that most of that stuff isn’t actually from the forties and if I can tell he’ll be able to tell,” he says. Frankly for a government agency with supposedly endless pockets they were shit at making things look authentic.

“Your advice?” Coulson asks, smiling at him again, which irritates him because Coulson thinks he’s got him hooked when he doesn’t, he’s just curious.

“I advise you let me in,” he says, “besides, I’m supposed to analyze the weapon, right?” he says, raising an eyebrow at Coulson. They, surprisingly, let him in.

He had JARVIS run tests, he did his own measurements, he went over medical records from before and after the serum, including his brain waves. Other than the change in brain waves in the last two weeks there was nothing there that he didn’t already know which annoyed him because he was running scans on Captain America and not _learning_ anything, what a travesty.

He’s in the room when Cap wakes up, fiddling with the I.V and thinking of what else he could do; maybe have JARVIS run another scan? There had to be _something_ new he could learn.

“Wha- Howard? What’re you doing here?” Steve asks and Tony nearly jumps. Instead he takes a deep breath and ignores that Steve had mistaken him for his father.

“Ugh, no, not Howard. His son, actually, Tony,” he says, examining the confused look on Steve’s face. Steve looks around after that and seems to come to the realization that Tony assumed he would, that this wasn’t the forties and something was up. The only reason he didn’t freak out was because Tony was supposedly the son of someone he trusted.

“What the hell is going on?” Steve asks.

“To be honest we have no clue, just that we found you in the ice about six months ago and in the last couple weeks your brain waves changed, indicating that you were coming out of your comatose state and here we are, seventy years after you crashed into the ice,” he says, giving Steve all the required information at once. Coulson had advised against that but Tony had said they should want to build rapport and that lying to him was a shit way to do that. They had pointed out he was no expert on this sort of thing, which he agreed with, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right.

“Okay,” Steve says, pulling himself into a sitting position, “so um, Howard has a kid? Didn’t see that coming, how is he anyways?” Steve asks, perhaps forgetting how long it has been or maybe asking out of instinct.

“Dead,” Tony says bluntly. Steve looks instantly sad and Tony regrets being so blunt, “it’s been fifteen years, car accident when I was seventeen,” he says softly, “it’s been a long time for me, for everyone, so sorry if I was… harsh,” he says. He didn’t have the energy to keep up his unapologetic, uncaring image right now and even if he did he was talking to _Captain America_ , the least he could do was be nice.

He asks about the rest of his friends and Tony tells him that most of them are dead, dying, or in a deteriorating mental status in the case of Peggy Carter. Steve reacts surprisingly well or he’s surprisingly good at hiding his feelings, probably a bit of both. “Sorry,” Tony says, squeezing his shoulder and ignoring that it was firmly padded with muscle, but just for now.

It doesn’t take long for Steve to see through S.H.I.E.L.D’s bullshit and go to Tony, who tells him he has no faith at all in S.H.I.E.L.D and had only chose to work with them because _Captain America_ and he was so not passing up an opportunity to look at his ass. Steve, oddly, blushes at that when Tony expected him to be offended. It wasn’t as if people in the forties were all that open minded about, well, anything.

Despite this Steve steadily worked to prove him wrong on everything. Other than using outdated terminology that he promptly corrected when someone (Tony or Rhodey) pointed it out he had no problem with any of the groups that Tony would have thought he would. Actually he was outraged that black boys were treated basically the same as they were in his time, he enjoyed the idea of Pride even if he was confused on all the new letter additions, and he wasn’t sexist at all, at least not intentionally. Pepper was enthused with this and the two quickly became friends, sharing an interest in sports that Tony didn’t understand. He found sports basically like fetch, but with more rules, and they bored him half to death. It had driven Howard nuts, he loved sports and when Tony didn’t share that love he acted like it was a personal attack on him or something.

Steve is released from S.H.I.E.L.D roughly a month after waking up and Tony offers to let him move into the tower to try and smooth his transition. He was still lost on a lot of things, like money, and throwing him into his own apartment seemed like a bad idea. Steve had refused at first, not wanting to impose, but Tony had laughed, “I’m a billionaire Steve, I have tons of space and your diet sure as hell won’t strain by budget,” he tells him. It takes another hour of pestering but Steve finally relents and agrees to move in with Tony. 

Rhodey shows up to help; casually slipping that he was a colonel into conversation because he and Tony wanted to see what Steve did. He immediately snapped to attention and Rhodey and Tony exchange a look that Steve probably couldn’t interpret, half the time Pep was lost on their non-verbal communication and they’ve all known each other for almost ten years. Rhodey proceeds to take advantage of his higher rank for most of the day just to fuck with Steve, who didn’t catch on until the end of the day.

Rhodey drags Tony into the bathroom and the two jump around yelling excitedly, clutching at each other. It was not lost on either of them that they were acting like fifteen year old girls at some stupid boy band concert but he had no problem with fifteen year old girls being excited about a band so obviously he was not acting like a fool. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god!” they yelled, squealing and jumping around in each other’s arms, “this is the greatest day of my life!” they yells in sync.

The door opens and reveals Steve grinning at them and leaning against the door jam, “even if I didn’t have enchanted hearing I would have heard you guys across the apartment,” he tells them. They stand there staring for a second before Tony leans out of Rhodey’s arms and shuts they door and starts screaming again, Rhodey quickly following, pulling Tony in for a kiss.

He pulls away a second later in horror, “it’s like that one time in college!” Tony jokes, grinning at Rhodey.

Rhodey looks unimpressed, “you ruined it now, you ruined the greatest day of my life,” he says, deadpan.

Tony snorts, “You kissed me, thanks, and I know damn well that I am a good kisser and you agreed in college. Plus my kissing skills totally got you a girlfriend so I think you should thank me for teaching you my ways,” he says, wiggling his eyebrows. Rhodey give him the bitch face and he laughs, opening the door to find Steve still there. Rhodey was embarrassed but Tony was shameless, he gave up on caring what people thought a long time ago.

_Six months ago_

Howard picks up the morning paper as per usual, examining the front page for a second before he realizes what he was seeing. “Hey, hey Selene, they found Tony!” he says, rushing into the house.

Selene looks up from her phone, “did they now? That’s nice, dear,” she says, disinterested in Tony’s welfare. He didn’t blame her really; it wasn’t like they actually knew the guy but Howard felt inexplicably attached anyways. He loved Stark tech, it always worked better than everything else _and_ it looked cool. He reads the article excitedly; finding out about James Rhodes bravely rescued Tony Stark, who somehow managed to escape captivity with the terrorists that had kidnapped him. He felt strangely relieved that Tony was safe and back in his own country and oddly grateful to Rhodes for finding him.

“Oh hey, dad’s favourite celebrity is alive, joy!” Grant says, dropping into his seat at the table.

Howard throws a strawberry chunk at him, “don’t be a shit. Eat your breakfast, I slaved over a hot stove to make it,” he says, grinning at his kid. Selene snorts at him because she was the one who made breakfast; he just talked to her while she did. He counted that as cooking.

Grant sticks his tongue out at Howard, “yeah, yeah. So Stark isn’t dead, huh?” he asks. Howard nods and happily fills Grant in on the information he got from the article and making a few inferences of his own. Stocks would rise, that was for sure, and he got a strange pleasure out of knowing Stark Industries would be successful.

Maria comes down shortly after that, whining about a chemistry experiment she had at school that day. “I thought you liked science?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

She rolls her eyes, “I did until I got stuck with a fuckboy partner in that class and he seems to think guys are automatically smarter than girls because they have bigger brains or some stupid shit,” she says.

Selene tells her to watch her language and Howard frowns, “brain size is relative to body size, that has nothing to do with a person’s sex. And wait, your science partner is that Brain Smith kid, right?” he asks, Maria nods, “aren’t you like five inches taller than him? By his own shit logic he’d be dumber than you,” Howard points out.

“Oh I pointed that out,” Maria says, “he was not impressed, so he threw a cow eye at Stacy and told the teacher it was me. I mean I no problem throwing a half dissected cow eye at Stacy because she’s a bitch and I would have told the truth if I did, I’d want her to know, but I didn’t and now I’m stuck on the sidelines because Brian is an asshole,” she laments, making a face.

“ _Language_!” Selene scolds again.

“Oh come on, Stacy is a bitch, and she dresses like shit, and Brain is an asshole, let a kid live!” Howard says, grinning at Maria, who nodded vigorously, “and I’ll talk to your teacher,” he tells her.

“Awesome!” she says excitedly.

“Don’t encourage your children to swear, Howard,” Selene scolds him, “it’s impolite,” she says.

“And since when have I ever been polite?” he says, gently tugging on a strand of Selene’s hair.

“Oh it’s like I have three kids instead of two,” she says, throwing a piece of banana at him. He deftly blocks it, sending back her way.

“Don’t throw food, Selene,” he says, throwing a strawberry chunk at her and sticking out his tongue. His children quickly join in, tossing fruit Selene’s way, she gives as good as she gets though, laughing and tossing bananas at Grant.

“Stop throwing fruit at my hair; it took like an hour to do it this morning!” Maria protests, trying to protect her long black hair.

“Okay, no one throw food at Maria’s hair,” Howard says, “aim for the white shirt instead!” he says and sends a strawberry her way, everyone else quickly following suit.

“Oh my god, you people are savages!” she yells, running out of the room with fruit following her.

“Love you, too honey!” Howard calls after her jokingly.

“Oh my god, I hope you get run over again!” she yells back.

“Maria!” Selene scolds but Howard just laughs, they had an understanding, she didn’t actually want him to get run over again, she just had a dark sense of humour. He could appreciate that, he had a pretty dark sense of humour too.

_Present day_

He had been some worried when Tony had announced he wasn’t making weapons anymore, that was bound to ruin his company, but he had made a huge comeback, making technological breakthroughs in several different areas and brining the company back from the brink. “Damn, the guy has some incredible business sense,” he says, well aware that Grey didn’t care about Tony Stark.

Grey pulls himself out of the car he was working on, “I don’t see why you care about the guy so much, he’s a pompous ass who only cares about himself,” Grey says, annoyed with Howard babbling on about Tony.

“Oh come on, that’s not true, he cares about other people, he loves Pepper Potts, and Rhodey,” Howard says, compelled to defend Tony, “besides, he probably has a media image to keep up, he’s probably not that selfish in real life,” he says.

Grey rolls his eyes, “as my teenaged kid would say, your fav is problematic,” he says, shaking his head.

Howard frowns, “what does that even mean?” he asks.

“The fuck if I know,” he says, “I don’t understand my girls, heaven knows I try but they make no sense,” Grey says, sighing.

“I don’t know what your problem is, Maria and I have an understanding, it’s Grant I don’t get. Like yesterday he went to school wearing that hideous poncho Selene made him and wondered why the other kids were picking on him. Like come on, the thing has what looks like lima beans knitted into the bottom, what did you expect?” he says, confused on his kid’s logic.

Grey laughs, “Did you tell him that?” he asks.

“Hell no, Selene would have kicked my ass, I told him if he liked it he should ignore the other kids, besides, Maria told him exactly what I was thinking so I didn’t have to crush the poor kid’s spirits,” he says. He was planning on burning that thing though, no one should be seen in public wearing that and he sure as hell wasn’t going to be seen _with_ Grant wearing that thing.

“Yeah, fair enough. So did ya figure out where you were going on vacation this year?” he asks, frowning at the car in front of him.

“Yeah, I finally managed to talk Selene into New York. Get out of the way, you’re probably fucking that poor car up royally,” he says, nudging Grey out of the way. How the hell the guy got a job as a mechanic he’d never know.

“I thought Selene hated New York?” he says, wiping his hands off on a rag. Grey had done a number on the poor car but Howard knew what he was doing, the car would be fine.

“She does, but after I almost got stung by five separate scorpions last year she relented and let me pick this year. She knew I was going to pick New York, I’ve always wanted to go,” he says and makes a face at the mess of wires Grey and been fucking around with. This was going to take forever. Grey probably kept talking to him and he probably responded but he didn’t really remember any of it, he was too focused on the car in front of him. He didn’t realize what time it was until Grey pulled him out of the car and told him to go home, practically chasing him out with a broom. He hated leaving projects unfinished but he went home anyways.

_Two months after Steve’s release_

Tony doesn’t bother to knock on Rhodey’s; he just enters and runs through the house screaming. In hindsight that was probably a dumb idea because Rhodey came downstairs with a gun and nearly shot him, “oh my god this is the greatest day of my life!” he shrieks, flailing around.

Rhodey looks unimpressed, “calm your shit, Stark, what is going on?” he asks, lowering his weapon and setting it on his kitchen counter.

“I had actual sex with actual Captain America!” he yells excitedly.

Rhodey takes a deep breath, “if you’re lying, Stark, I will pick this weapon back up and shoot you,” he threatens.

He grabs Rhodey’s shoulders and pulls him close, “ _actual_ sex with _actual_ Captain America,” he whispers. Rhodey is calm for about a second before he starts screaming and jumping around with him, sharing in his fanguy excitement.

“You have to tell me everything! Was he great, he was great!” Rhodey decides, “oh my god all the cool things happen to you, minus that one time you got kidnapped by those terrorists and your business partner tried to kill you but other than that,” Rhodey yells and starts squealing and flailing around again.

“Oh my god I feel so patriotic!” Tony yells, waving his hands in front of his face.

Rhodey stops suddenly, “wait, you didn’t run out right after, did you?” he asks.

Tony stops, frowning at Rhodey’s sudden downer, “um, yes?” he says, sensing that something was wrong with that but he wasn’t sure what.

Rhodey smacks him, “oh my god you idiot, he thinks you hate him, go find him and have makeup sex then tell me everything, you do not leave a detail out, you hear me Stark? Leave _no_ details out!” he yells and shoves Tony out the door


	2. Chapter 2

_Nearly four months after Steve’s release from S.H.I.E.L.D_

Tony was pretty pissed when his make out session with Steve fucking Rogers, he still couldn’t believe it, was interrupted by S.H.I.E.L.D calling him. Like he was straddling Captain America right now with only some flannel separating them from nakedness, there was nothing S.H.I.E.L.D had that was better than this. “What?” he snaps into the receiver of his phone.

“Be nice,” Steve tells him, smiling and still looking adorably sleepy. Tony wrinkles his nose at Steve playfully.

“We have another biological weapon for you-” Coulson starts but Tony cuts him off.

“Oh I’m gunna stop you right there, “I don’t care,” he says.

“-But this one has mechanical components,” Coulson continues like Tony hadn’t just interrupted him.

Tony frowns, “what? The hell is that even supposed to mean?” he asks, curious despite himself.

“We’re not sure,” Coulson says, “that’s why we called you.”

“Fine,” he says and hangs up before Coulson can sound smug or something.

Steve raises an eyebrow, running his hands over Tony’s thighs, “what was that?” he asks, tilting his head to the side and looking a little more alert than he had five minutes ago.

“No idea, but apparently they have a biological weapon with mechanical components,” he says, grinning.

Steve looks confused, “what does that mean?” he asks.

“I have _no_ idea,” Tony says, “but I’m hoping for a cyborg!” he says, wiggling around in excitement.

Steve laughs and flips them over, trapping Tony under his body, “do you have to go in right away?” he asks, brushing his nose against Tony’s.

Tony considers it for like a half a second, “nah,” he says and pulls Steve in for a kiss. That lasts a grand total of thirty seconds because Tony couldn’t stop thinking of the possibilities and Steve was annoyed at being an afterthought so he shooed him out.

*

When Tony saw who it was he was like a billion times less excited because his relationship was fucked. Well, he should have expected that, good things never lasted for him. He sighs and turns to Coulson, “just let me handle this alone, got that?” he says, snippier than he intended to be but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

Coulson gives him an odd look but nods, probably figuring if he didn’t screw up Steve he probably wouldn’t screw this up either. He takes a deep breath and enters the room that contained on James Buchanan Barnes, AKA Bucky or, according to new information, the Winter Soldier. Tony had heard rumours but really, the guy was a ghost, he never believed that the Winter Soldier was real, or that he was Bucky of all people.

He holds his hands up and does a slow spin to show he wasn’t carrying any weapons, with the clothes he was wearing Bucky would have been able to tell if he was carrying anything, and he walks slowly up to him. “I’m going to unstrap one of your arms, okay?” he says, moving slowly towards the cuffs that strapped Bucky to the table S.H.I.E.L.D decided it was a good idea to restrain him to.

Bucky stays very still when Tony undoes the straps on his human arm, leaving the metal one that was probably the mechanical component Coulson had mentioned where it was until he could properly analyze it. Despite his cooperation Tony can see Bucky’s panic, it was pretty fucking clear he had no idea where he was, maybe not even who he was, and he had no idea what was going on. Tony undoes to final strap and Bucky moves lightning fast, grabbing his throat and lifting him off the floor, displaying an incredible about of strength, probably on par with Steve’s. Tony was going to check that out when he wasn’t being strangled by a mythical assassin.

“Not… wise,” Tony croaks out, “I’m… help,” he manages to squeeze out. Bucky looks confused and drops him, thankfully, and Tony rubs his neck, taking in a reedy breath.

He slowly picks himself off the ground and turns to face Bucky, who flinches hard. Tony sighs, okay, this was going to be more difficult than he expected. He lifts his hands slowly and Bucky continues to flinch, trying to curl into a ball despite being mostly restrained. Amazingly he doesn’t try to undo his straps and go despite that he was clearly capable of that. “I’m not going to hurt you,” Tony says, holding his hands up, “I’m an engineer, I was called in to look at your arm, the metal one,” he throws in, “but I won’t do that until you tell me I can, okay?” he says and takes two large steps back.

He narrates his every move to Bucky before he makes it in an attempt to build trust but it was slow going. He was out getting food around lunch when Steve calls, “hey,” he says into the receiver and winces. He had no idea what to do here, did he tell Steve and have him barge in and freak Bucky out? Not tell Steve and potentially kill his relationship that much faster? Tell Steve and try to keep him out? That would probably be impossible and Tony didn’t blame him. If it was Rhodey there wasn’t a force on earth that would keep him from making sure his best friend was okay, and Rhodey has already done the same for him.

“You’re taking an awfully long time,” Steve comments, “interesting cyborg?” he jokes.

“Oh, something like that,” he says, “turns out the guy is a little… well a lot fucked up, I’m trying to build some rapport at the moment but it’s slow going, he doesn’t trust anyone right now and I’m not about to force him into cooperation,” like S.H.I.E.L.D he adds to himself.

“Oh wow, is he okay?” Steve asks, immediately empathizing with someone he doesn’t even know he knows. It was sweet, Tony thought, and he loved that about Steve even if it drove him nuts sometimes.

“No, not even a little,” he says honestly because he was definitely planning on telling Steve about Bucky later but now just wasn’t the time, Bucky wasn’t ready for new people to be introduced, Bucky wasn’t even ready for him to be reintroduced. He and Steve talk for a few more minutes before he hangs up and goes back to trying to get Bucky to not flinch every time he moved.

He brings food in case Bucky was hungry but didn’t really expect him to take much of an interest in it. He, however, was very fond of McDonald’s and devoured his food in like five minutes. “That looks disgusting,” Bucky says and flinches when Tony looks up.

“Ehh, shnot bahh,” he tells him, mouth full of burger. Bucky wrinkles his nose at him and he decides Bucky Barnes has absolutely zero taste, at least not in food, his taste in guys wasn’t half bad not that he knew that yet.

Tony was well aware that it was selfish to hope Bucky never got his memories back just so his relationship would remain intact but that’s what he found himself wishing for by dinner time. He had mostly unstrapped Bucky by then, slowly releasing one limb at a time to build trust without giving him too much freedom all at once. It seemed to work because around seven o’clock Bucky speaks again, “why are you pacing?” he asks quietly, his voice still sounding loud in the near empty room.

“This guy I started dating a couple months ago, his ex is back in two and my relationship is fucked,” he says, not bothering to lie.

“That shouldn’t matter,” Bucky says softly, “if he cares.”

“I really hope you’re right,” Tony says, well aware that telling Bucky that he hoped his relationship with Steve never returned to the way it was so _so_ cruel, especially since he didn’t even know what was going on. But then he always had been a selfish bastard, this was no different.

Two hours after than Bucky speaks again, this time requesting his metal arm to be freed, claiming discomfort. Tony wasn’t an idiot though, Bucky had been tracking his movements closely and Tony was a very predictable creature, he knew Bucky knew that he was going to the bathroom in five minutes. “Thought you said you were an engineer?” he says, eyeing Tony suspiciously.

“I am, but I’ve been held hostage too. I know an escape plan when I see one,” he says and goes back to pacing. He calls Steve an hour after than to tell him he won’t be home that night, that he wasn’t really sure when he would be home.

Bucky quickly becomes aware that Tony isn’t leaving until he gets permission to work on his arm and the two enter a competition to see who will break and fall asleep first. Tony was good at competition though, and he was used to being up for days at a time. Bucky had chosen the wrong person to try this with but he didn’t know it yet. Steve gets worried on day three, telling him it wasn’t healthy to be awake this long, as usual. Tony tells him not to worry and requests he bring some of Tony’s things so he can at least do work while he waited Bucky out.

It was early on day four that Bucky tries to unstrap his metal arm from the table, promptly getting zapped. Nothing too harsh, but not something he’d want to try again, he frowns at Tony and he shrugs, saying that they didn’t particularly want Bucky to escape. He had no idea what S.H.I.E.L.D had rigged up, whatever it was didn’t seem to react to him and that was what he found most important.

Early on day five Bucky passes out and Tony sighs, “thank fucking god,” he says and quickly follows Bucky’s lead and falls asleep slumped in the corner.

Coulson wakes him up sometime later and gives him food, harassing him about how much longer this was going to take. Tony snatched the food and told Coulson too piss off. The smell of food wakes Bucky up, he hadn’t eaten a whole lot in the last few days, probably not trusting S.H.I.E.L.D to give him poison free food. Tony didn’t blame the guy; he decided to eat cafeteria food once and decided he’d rather eat whatever he was fed in the caves in Afghanistan.

“Fine,” Bucky says some time after he had woken up, “and I want a hash brown,” he says, probably trying to sound assertive but not succeeding in the least, he just sounded freaked out.

“Fine,” Tony says, picking himself up off the floor slowly, grabbing the hash brown he saved for Bucky in case he decided to cooperate. It seemed he realized that was better than option two, S.H.I.E.L.D cafeteria food, frankly rocks were a better option than that.

He walks over, still moving relatively slowly, and makes an attempt to drop the hash brown in Bucky’s mouth but he misses and it falls on his face, “sorry,” he says, laughing. Bucky looked unimpressed.

“You could have just handed it to me,” he gripes. Tony ignores him in favour of his arm, which proved to be very a very interesting thing indeed.

He spent maybe ten minutes looking at it when Bucky decides to ask what was going on, “I don’t know,” he says, frowning at the mechanics. Bucky’s wrist and shoulders were still strapped down, which probably wouldn’t do a whole lot of Bucky felt like escaping but it made him feel better.

“Well why are you making that face?” Bucky asks, sounding nervous.

Tony tilts his head to the side, “because there are only two people in the entirety of human history that could have made this and one has been dead for fifteen years, and I sure as hell didn’t make this… kinda wish I did though, it’s cool,” he says, grinning at Bucky. Bucky just looked freaked out though, like he’d just seen a ghost, and he starts to pull away somewhat frantically.

“Hey, hey,” Tony says, taking a step back, putting his hands up again, “whoa, calm down,” he tells Bucky. Bucky looked fucking terrified though, like he was expecting Tony to pounce on him at any moment or something, as if he’d win that fight. “I think you might have misunderstood what I said.”

“You said that only you and whoever could have built this, the other guy is dead, that leaves you,” Bucky says and he starts pulling at the straps again.

“Hey, take a breath,” he tells Bucky, “don’t get me wrong, I built everything that went into this arm and what I didn’t my father did, but neither one of us actually built the arm itself. I can promise you that, all of this stuff can be acquired independently. Clearly someone bought a StarkTech arm, some assembly required,” he says, brows drawing together in confusion.

“Promise?” Bucky asks, voice barely loud enough to hear.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “I promise.”

*

Howard loved New York; he decided that before he even got there. Too bad Selene hated it, he’d move there in a heartbeat. Grant seemed to take after his mother and absolutely hated the crowds and the bustle but Maria liked it. He figured she would, she was much more like him than Grant was, not that he loved either one more than the other. Selene had been acting weird, like she was expecting someone to jump out at her at any moment but he assumed that was because she didn’t like large cities, which turned out to be very far from the truth.

He’s walking around by himself, Selene and the kids were off doing something they wanted to do, when he runs into someone. “Oh shit,” he says, automatically reaching out to steady the person he ran into. He looks at who he caught and just about drops him out of shock, “Tony… Tony _Stark_!” he says, excited. What were the chances! He’d been hoping he’d run into Tony but really, he was a busy man and New York was huge, plus for all he knew Tony wasn’t even in the country. But here he was, running over Tony… and god, that was so embarrassing, this so wasn’t how this should have went.

Tony looks likes just seen a ghost, “Howard?” he asks, looking confused, hurt, and a little offended. Howard understood the confused and offended bit, he did just practically run the guy over, but the hurt in Tony’s expression threw him for a loop.

“Um, yeah? How do you know my name?” he asks, confused. Tony _Stark_ knew his _name_ , how was that even possible? He was tempted not to care except that was way too weird.

He extracts himself from Howard’s grasp, “ugh, gee, I don’t know, because you’re my dad?” Tony says like its obvious, looking at him like he’s stupid, “you’re supposed to be a little bit dead though.”

Howard laughs nervously, “what? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” What the hell was Tony playing at here? His _dad_?Frankly he imagined if he ever met Tony in person he’d be less… weird.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “so you’re not Howard Stark? Or are just that ashamed of me you faked your own death, somehow de-aged the shit out of yourself, and deny all relations to me because it is just _that_ embarrassing to be related to me?” he asks, upset.  

Howard frowns, “what? No, I’m Howard _Stone_ , but if I was your father I sure as hell wouldn’t be ashamed of you, you’re an extremely successful business man and brilliant inventor, what kind of father would possibly be ashamed of you?” he asks, horrified that someone could possibly think Tony Stark wasn’t a success. If he wasn’t he didn’t really want to know what constituted as a failure in that father’s eyes. God, what a crappy person, and a terrible parent!   

Tony sighs and rubs his face, “shit, I am so sorry, you look _exactly_ like my dead father. Good lord, I need to go to bed, so sorry,” he says to Howard again before rushing off to where ever it was he was headed, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Well, that was weird. Howard supposed he’d be freaked out if he ran into someone that looked like his dead father too though, especially if they had the same name. Not that he would know, ever since the accident fifteen years ago he couldn’t remember anything about his previous life, just that no one had come looking for him. Thankfully Selene had been around to pull him out of the car and get him medical attention; he’d be dead without her.


	3. Chapter 3

Tony wasn’t sure why he was losing sleep, Howard or Bucky, but he was getting kind of annoyed with it. Steve wasn’t a moron, he knew something was going on and Tony wasn’t exactly sure what to tell him. It didn’t help that Bucky refused to talk to anyone but him and S.H.I.E.L.D was up his ass to get useful information out of the guy. Tony felt bad for Bucky, he had no idea what was going on and S.H.I.E.L.D was making zero efforts to try and work with him, instead making him purposefully uncomfortable in an attempt to get information faster. Tony didn’t get that, if it was him in there he’d keep his information to himself out of spite; he did plenty of that in the caves. Bucky didn’t seem to mind his uncomfortable accommodations though, clearly having been in worse and finding his new upgrade more comfortable.

The only time things got more comfortable for Bucky was when Tony was around because Tony refused to sit in a freezing cold room for hours trying to get Bucky to talk. He had standards and he fully expected S.H.I.E.L.D to accommodate for him if they wanted his cooperation. This has the unintentional effect of conditioning Bucky to associate Tony with better living conditions and food, which only served to make Bucky more reserved and guarded when S.H.I.E.L.D agents tried to get any sort of information out of him. He was secretly happy about this because he was at least someone’s favourite person even if the circumstances didn’t really leave him any other options. The only person he seemed to display any other preference for was Coulson, and that was probably because he was the one who brought Tony to see Bucky most times.

Then there was that whole Howard thing, that was just weird. The guy had looked _exactly_ like his father, like his de-aged twin or something and it had freaked him out. Now whenever he slept he kept having nightmares about Howard, about his childhood. Nothing had ever been good enough for him and something about his doppelgänger claiming he was pissed him off, which didn’t really make a lot of sense. He shouldn’t have been hung up on the guy, it wasn’t like he hadn’t run into people who looked like Howard before, but something about this guy was different and he didn’t know what it was. Questions always irritated him, he liked black and white, grey areas meant uncertainty and he didn’t do uncertain, he did definitive.

“Hey,” Steve says the day after he ran into Not-Howard, “what’s wrong?” he asks.

Tony sighs, “To be honest I’m not really sure,” he says, “I’ve just had a rough week and a half I guess. I’ll be okay,” he assures Steve. He had to get some prototypes to Pepper too, he was a week behind and she was chewing his ass four days ago. Thankfully with his lack of sleep for the past two days he had been able to mostly get his work done. S.H.I.E.L.D had called in the morning though, something about Bucky’s arm malfunctioning, so he had to go in and deal with that before he dealt with anything else.

“You sure?” Steve asks, brushing his fingers over the now yellowing bruises Bucky had left around his neck, “S.H.I.E.L.D seems to be running you pretty hard trying to get information out of your cyborg,” he says, smiling slightly.

Tony laughs softy, “yeah, truth be told I don’t think their guy has a whole lot to offer, he was more a victim than a perpetrator, not that S.H.I.E.L.D thanks that,” he says somewhat harshly. What made then think Bucky was complicit in his torture he had no idea, frankly he didn’t care, it was pretty fucking obvious he was doing what he needed to in order to stay alive. He knew a thing or two about that and the way S.H.I.E.L.D treated Bucky struck a nerve with him.

“You sure you’re okay? You seem pretty upset,” Steve points out.

“Yeah… I… yeah, it just bugs me, the way they treat him. It’s more than obvious that he’s been tortured extensively, he’s been brainwashed, he doesn’t even know who he is for Christ sakes, how the hell could anyone think he wasn’t the victim here?” he asks, frustrated.

Steve tilts his head to the side, “it makes you wonder how they would have treated you if you weren’t, well, you,” he says.

Tony nods, “yeah, I mean I didn’t want to build a bomb for terrorists, I just did what I need to so I didn’t die, so Yinsen didn’t die. So why was I treated like a person when I came back, offered a job even, but this guy is treated like a criminal when he went through way worse?” he shakes his head, “that just doesn’t sit right with me,” he says.

Steve smiles at him, brushing his fingers over his cheek, “you have such a big heart,” he says and Tony laughs, yeah okay.

“You haven’t known be long enough to know how laughable that is,” he tells him.

Steve frowns, seemingly upset with Tony’s conclusion, “maybe not, but I know that you’ve spent the last week and a half advocating for someone you don’t even know, often sacrificing your own health to do it. I know that Rhodey called you a month ago saying it was an emergency and you were out of bed before he was even done his sentence, I know that you regularly pay off people’s hospital bills and student loans, and I know that out of the small amount of people that know who I am you’re the only one who makes me feel like a person instead of a science experiment. You’re not a bad person because you’ve done bad things Tony, you are so much more than you know,” he says, cupping Tony’s face. He lets himself take some comfort in Steve before he leaves to go deal with Bucky’s arm. He doubted Steve’s opinion of him will be the same after he found out that he had purposefully kept Bucky from him, at least his would be, if he was in Steve’s place.

*

He had a semi-regular schedule with Bucky, who had picked up on this long ago, and apparently did better when Tony made his regular trip in. He was more agitated and jumpy when Tony didn’t show up according to Coulson. He shows up with breakfast, which irritates the S.H.I.E.L.D agents because they wanted to restrict Bucky’s diet as much as possible. No wonder Bucky refused to speak to anyone but Tony.

He walks into the room Bucky was currently housed in and Bucky looks up, glaring daggers at the door before he realized it was Tony and his features soften some. “Please tell me that isn’t from S.H.I.E.L.D,” he says, gesturing to the bag Tony was holding.

“Fuck no, I have standards,” he says and hands Bucky his bag, “I’d eat a rubber boot before I tried S.H.I.E.L.D cafeteria food again,” he wrinkles his nose. Bucky practically inhales the food but Tony takes his time, Bucky wasn’t exactly relaxed and that would make working on that arm difficult. He was still confused about how the hell Bucky’s captors had access to Stark Tech of that long, at least half the parts in the arm were traceable but when Tony tried to track them down he got fake names. The other half of the parts were things his father almost certainly made himself and they weren’t things that would be sold on a regular basis if at all.

“I’m guessing you’re here because of the arm?” Bucky says quietly.

Tony nods, “what seems to be the problem?” he asks.

Bucky frowns, “I’m not sure, it kind of hurts but it shouldn’t because it’s not a real arm,” he says.                                             

That confuses Tony but he admittedly hasn’t gotten around to looking through the whole arm so it was entirely possible he had missed something in his initial examinations of the arm. “Does it hurt in any specific area?” he asks, maybe it was ghost pains? That was possible. He was hoping something wasn’t wrong with the actual arm itself, he didn’t have a full understanding of how it worked and how, exactly, it was connected to Bucky and he didn’t particularly want to find out by screwing something up and hurting Bucky. He’d never trust him after that and Tony wouldn’t blame him.

Bucky shakes his head at Tony’s question and winces, like he expects Tony to do something to him for not having a real answer. “Okay, does it hurt more when you move it?” he asks, Bucky nods, “alright, it’s probably something caught on something else,” he says. He wipes his hands his hands off and goes to get some supplies that will hopefully deal with the problem.

“Is it alright if I look at your arm?” he asks Bucky when he comes back.

Bucky looks irritated, “do I have a choice?” he asks, sounding a bit sarcastic. Tony raises an eyebrow, that was new, Bucky generally talked in monotone unless he was freaked out so this was new.

“Yeah, you do, it’s your arm and I’m not going to go poking around in it without your permission,” he tells him.

Bucky looks confused for a second, like he wasn’t expecting the ability to make his own decision, “and if I say no?” he asks, not quite able to hid his fear.

“Then I’m not going to go poking around in your arm, this is your choice,” Tony tells him. He wondered when Bucky had had to make a choice last, a real choice, not opting to follow his handler’s orders and follow through on whatever it is he did. Probably a very long time, or at least that’s what he assumed.

“Okay,” Bucky says, nodding to himself.

“You sure?” he asks and Bucky nods again so he sets himself up. He finds the problem relatively fast, some crossed wires, and frowns. If the particular wires did what he thought they did Bucky was probably in a lot of pain and he seemed to feel almost nothing. Or maybe he was just very good at hiding it, he was kind of hoping for option two because that had the possibility of less torture.

“That feel any better?” Tony asks, pulling the wires apart, they needed to be replaced and he had a sneaking suspicion that S.H.I.E.L.D wouldn’t let him take Bucky home like he did Steve. That would be beneficial though, he had better equipment there and he could scan everything, examining it without crawling into Bucky’s personal space. Besides, Bucky could use a scenery chance. He’d have to tell Steve first though, god knows what the poor guy would do if he came home and found his dead best friend hanging out in his boyfriend’s lab.

“Yeah,” Bucky says quietly and Tony decides he’s going to spring Bucky from S.H.I.E.L.D’s clutches and he’s probably going to use Steve to do so. Really, were they dumb enough to tell Captain America no? Coulson would wet himself at the thought, they guy was practically in love with Steve, well, Captain America, Steve Rogers was a mystery that was lost of Coulson.

“You’ve got a plan,” Bucky says, “you always make that face when you figure out how to get S.H.I.E.L.D to do what you want,” he tells him. Well, Bucky was observant he’d give him that.

“Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D is going to release you into my custody, provided that’s what you want, and they aren’t going to have much of a choice,” he says, grinning. They should know better than to not cooperate, Tony Stark always got what he wanted, but he knew they would resist and when they did they were going to have to have a tough time explaining why Bucky should be on lock down to Steve Rogers.

“I’d rather go back to my handlers than stay here,” Bucky says, looking traumatized.

Tony winces, okay then, “I’m going to make a few phone calls and with any luck I’ll have you out by tonight,” he says and walks with purpose to the door, prepared to make S.H.I.E.L.D bend to his will.

Coulson meets him at the door with his arms crossed, “you can’t seriously think we’re going to give you Barnes,” he says, doing his best impersonation of a disappointed dad.

Tough for him, Tony had a lifetime of experience in disappointing dads, “Oh I seriously think you will,” he chirps, patting Coulson’s cheek and walking away to make his phone calls.

*

“You seriously met Tony Stark?” Maria asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, I seriously met Tony Stark, I almost ran the poor guy down because I wasn’t paying enough attention to where I was going,” he says, still embarrassed about the whole mess, “and apparently I look just like his dead father. Creepy,” he says.

Maria snorts, “Oh my god, this is like a bad movie. Tony Stark , wildly popular billionaire who is secretly sad and lonely runs into a guy who looks just like his abusive asshole of a dad and the two become unlikely friends,” she says dramatically.

“Oh shut it,” he says jokingly, “I highly doubt I’ll ever see him again. Besides, I remind the guy of his shitty father, why would he want to spend time with me?” he says logically, “and what kind of father could possibly think Tony wasn’t good enough?” he asks. That made no sense to him whatsoever, the guy had invented technology that was so advanced it wasn’t even supposed to exist on several occasions. _How_ could that not be good enough? What kind of crappy father did that poor man have?

“Are you seriously clueless about Howard Stark? The guy was a genius, no doubt, but he was a bad parent. All he ever did was push Tony to do more faster, like I guess graduating from high school at eleven, graduating from MIT at fourteen and having a PhD at seventeen wasn’t enough,” Maria shakes her head, “guy sounds like a real duchebag if you ask me. Like seriously though, you have this weird obsession with Tony Stark and you’ve never looked his dad up?” she asks.

Howard shrugs, something about Howard Stark seemed familiar, like he did look him up at some point but it was a long time ago but the memory was fuzzy. “No? It did really seem relevant I guess,” he says.

“One second, I’ll look him up then,” she says and taps away on her phone, “whoa, that is _weird_ ,” she says, “you look _exactly_ like his dad when Howard was younger, you even have the same first name, no wonder he was so freaked out,” Maria says, handing her phone to him over the table.

He looks at the picture and his eyebrows shoot up, Howard Stark could be his twin they looked that much alike. This was… this was just weird. He scrolls through the Wiki article on Howard, specifically focusing on family, and frowns. Howard Stark’s wife’s name was Maria and he allegedly worked with Steve Rogers, also known as Captain America, and his middle name was Grant. “That is a lot of very strange coincidences,” he murmurs.

Maria raises an eyebrow and he fills her in, “okay, that is really weird,” she says, “but you aren’t a genius billionaire inventor. I wish because then I wouldn’t have to worry about student loans,” she jokes.

Howard rolls his eyes, “yeah, yeah, if only I was a horrible father you wouldn’t have to pay for your schooling,” he says, playfully swatting her arm, “I do have a way with cars though,” he says.

Maria snorts, “your competition is Grey, you could throw road kill at an engine and it would do a better job fixing the problem then Grey would,” she points out. Howard laughs and nods, it wasn’t like it wasn’t true. Something was still off about the situation though, something in the back of his mind told him that he had a lot more in common with Howard Stark than a couple of weird name coincidences. Not that he particularly wanted that, it seemed Howard Stark cared more about his work than his family and that just wasn’t the kind of man he wanted to be.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a bit long for me! Yay lol.

He rounds the corner and pulls up Steve’s number, hoping Steve wouldn’t hate him for keeping Bucky a secret for almost two weeks. Maybe he’d understand, he was a lot more forgiving than Tony ever was, ever could be, but he had a healthy amount of doubts. Steve answers on the second ring, “hey, what’s up?” he asks. Tony smiles, he remembered the first time he had seen Steve use a phone, shortly after Tony had brought him home, he needed a way to contact him in case of emergencies or whatever. Steve had picked up how to use the phone within minutes and he had been so surprised, Steve, or course, was offended by this.

_“I’m not a moron, Tony,” Steve says, frowning at him._

_“I know that, but come on, you’re from the_ forties _, Steve, I have no reason to believe that you would pick up how to use modern technology so fast,” Tony says logically. Honestly, why would he think Steve would be good at technology? People in the forties barely had radio._

 _Steve stares at the phone in horror, “what the hell is this? A_ magical _light box? What does it do, can it cure polio?” he asks, eyes wide. God damn melodramatic asshole, apparently it was okay when he did it, god forbid Tony is melodramatic, then it’s ‘calm down Tony, there is no need to cry over a clam’. That clam tasted fucking delicious and he was just savouring it, okay?_

_“Actually they found a cure to polio,” Tony says._

_Steve blushes, “oh… well this is embarrassing,” he says, running his fingers through his short hair._

_“Just a little,” Tony agrees, grinning._

_“Still,” Steve says, “I’ve always been pretty good at figuring tech out, I’m sure you’ve read the files,” he says, raising an eyebrow and walking past Tony, brushing his shoulder on his way by. Tony casually ignores his attraction to Steve because really, just because he was open minded didn’t mean he was interested._

“Hey…” he says and trails off, not knowing exactly where to go with this. _So it turns out your best friend isn’t dead and I’ve purposefully kept it from you for almost two weeks_ didn’t really sound right.

“Are you okay? Did something go wrong with your cyborg again? Those bruises around your neck were pretty nasty last time…” Steve says sounding worried. Tony sighs, well, here goes nothing.

“No nothing is… wrong, not exactly. But I’m going to need you to come here and help me jailbreak my guy,” he says, deciding not to mention Bucky’s name if he could help it. Finding out your best friend and ex-lover was actually alive and had been used as a HYDRA pawn for the last seventy years was something that someone wouldn’t want to find out over the phone.

“Tony I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Steve says, worried, “you’ve told me quite a bit about this guy and it’s pretty obvious that your guy is volatile, antisocial, has severe PTSD, trust issues… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg, really,” Steve says.

Tony rubs his eyes, “I know, I know, but you’re going to have to trust me, S.H.I.E.L.D isn’t going to do anything but irritate this guy’s problems and he probably doesn’t have any information anyways and… and trust me, when you get here you’ll be interested. Just… just give me the benefit of the doubt, yeah?” he asks, wincing. He knew he’d be able to jail break Bucky, he was more than ambitious when he set his mind to it; he always got what he wanted. Always. Except for healthy friendships and relationships, with the exception of Rhodey. Pep cared, he knew, but she also got paid to put up with his shit so it was kind of difficult to tell why she stuck around.

Steve sighs, “alright, but I hope you know what you’re doing,” he says.

Tony snorts, “I have no idea what I’m doing, it’ll be fine though, my whole life has been ‘wait, what?’ followed by mass success,” he says lightly.

“Tony,” Steve says in a stern tone that he has come to recognize as Steve’s Mom Voice, or the one he uses when he wants you to know that you need to stop right now or else. Except ‘or else’ was usually manhandling followed by awesome sex and Tony wasn’t about to tell Steve he was conditioning Tony to associate what Steve would consider bad behaviours with orgasms. He would stick to irritating Steve into trying to physically stop Tony from continuing to do whatever he was doing and sit back to let what was sure to be a glorious orgasm follow.

“It’s fine, I’m fine, your fine, he’s… well he’s not fine at all but we’ll work on that,” he says, “just get here so we can team up and stick it to S.H.I.E.L.D,” he tells Steve and hangs up.

He turns around and finds Coulson standing behind him with his arms crossed, feet shoulder width apart, probably some sad attempt at displaying dominance. The guy looked too much like a harassed dad to pull that off ever. “This is never going to work, I don’t care what your lawyers say,” Coulson says.

Tony laughs, “Oh it’s cute that you think I called a _lawyer_ ,” he tells him, patting his shoulder in what was meant to be a condescending manner before heading back to Bucky’s room.

*

“You did _what_?” Selene yells.

“I looked up Howard Stark, why is that a problem exactly?” he asks, confused by Selene’s overreaction, “I mean other than the weird coincidences I don’t see why this is a big deal,” he says.

“They aren’t weird coincidences,” Selene snaps, “The names mean nothing.”

“Ugh, I think this is a little odd,” Grant says, “but I don’t mind being named after Captain America, he’s cool,” Grant says, grinning.

“Oh shut up, Grant,” Selene says, rolling her eyes at him.

“Hey,” Howard says, offended on Grant’s behalf, “I don’t know why you’re so pissed off but there’s no need to take it out on Grant, he’s a lonely nerd who wears that poncho you made him on a regular basis, hasn’t he suffered enough?” Howard says.

“Hey!” Grant says and throws a men at him, “I like that poncho!”

“Then you’re the only one, kid, because that it the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen and I was once subjected to Grey’s bear ass,” he says, making a face. Maria makes a gagging noise and leaves the room, having been there on the unfortunate day in question and witnessed the horror of Grey unclothed from the waist down.

Selene smacks his arm, “my poncho is not uglier than Grey’s ass! There is nothing uglier than Grey’s ass,” she says, offended that her knitting was in question.

“Well, maybe Grant’s head when he was born, it was freakishly large,” Howard says, poking Grant in the side.

He yips and jumps away, “my head was not that big!” he says, frowning.

“Oh yes it was, honey, I heard the doctors talking about you once and they thought you were an alien,” Selene says, laughing. Well, at least her mood changed, pissing Selene off meant he’d be miserable.

“Don’t look so upset Grant,” Howard says, “you grew into your big head, your sister wasn’t so lucky,” he tells him. Grant giggles, “and when the does that thing with her hair?” he says, gesturing to the crown of his head, “it’s like she’s trying to make an organic bird house.”

“It’s called teasing you savage, and I’m not trying to house birds in my hair, I’m giving my hair volume,” she says.

“Well sweetie, the pigeons don’t seem to be aware of that,” Selene says, patting Maria’s shoulder and walking away.

Maria looks scandalized, “you people have no style! And by the way Grant, you did not grow into your big head, that’s why everyone at school calls you E.T,” she snaps and stomps off. Teenagers, they were a mystery to him.

“People at school call you E.T?” Howard asks Grant, “that doesn’t even make sense, you’re much taller than E.T,” Howard says.

Grant shoves at his shoulder playfully, “thanks a lot for your support,” he says but he’s smiling so he obviously felt a little better.

“It’ll get better,” he tells Grant sincerely, squeezing his shoulder.

Grant snorts, “You can’t even remember what it was like as a kid,” he says.

Howard shrugs, “doesn’t really matter what I was like then, what I know is that things turned out great for me, I love my wife, and although one kid looks like she has a bird’s nest on her head and the other may or may not be of the human race but I love you guys too,” he says, ruffling Grant’s dark hair. Thank god both kids got his hair texture; they would have looked terrible with Selene’s thick curly hair, especially poor Grant.

Grant smacks his hand away, “I’m so a human!” he complains.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what an alien would say,” Howard says, grinning. Something was off, he could feel it, but it was easier to set aside his worries and make a joke than it was to confront his problems. It was a bad habit, he knew, but it was one he couldn’t seem to break himself of.

*

Tony figures he’ll sit with Bucky until Steve get there to fuck shit up with him. This was going to be fucking glorious; S.H.I.E.L.D could suck a field of dicks. Had they listened to him to begin with they wouldn’t have had to deal with Steve, but no, they had to have rules they were supposed to adhere to and whatnot. Rules were stupid and unnecessary, at least S.H.I.E.L.D’s stupid ‘don’t release Bucky’ rules. “Are you sure whatever you have planned will work?” Bucky asks, looking nervous.

“Trust me,” Tony says, “I assure you that come tomorrow morning you will not be here,” he says, “I am not the type of guy to let things go until I get what I want and I can promise you, I _will_ get what I want.” Besides the obvious benefit of getting Bucky out of a shit environment so he could at least make an attempt at finding a good mental health status this was a challenge and he loved a challenge.

Sometimes took on projects or funded things or tried to get close to people just to see if he could do it, the answer was almost always yes no matter how impossible it had been previous to his attempts. Aside from people almost all his endeavours went well, people usually ended in him getting attached and them leaving so he gave up on those a long time ago to save himself the heartache. At least until Steve and now he was attached and he was going to leave Tony for Bucky and Tony couldn’t even blame the guy. He and Bucky had a bond, he and Steve bickered a lot and had a great sex life, he couldn’t even compare but that was okay. He was used to this kind of thing and he would suck it up and get over himself. If he learned nothing else from Howard he learned to bury his emotions in his work until he didn’t feel much of anything afterwards.  

“But how?” Bucky asks, “They don’t seem keen on the idea of giving me up,” he says.

Tony snorts, “that doesn’t matter, I am very persuasive and they will be unable to resist my logic and knowledge,” he says confidently. If he could get physics to bend to his will he can get S.H.I.E.L.D to do what he wanted. Physics knew better, he was Tony Stark, and S.H.I.E.L.D was about to learn too.   

“So you’re basically going to bully them into handing me over,” Bucky states bluntly.

“Yeah, pretty much,” he says, not bothering to sugar coat it. He figured honestly was the best policy here, particularly because Bucky picked up on even the slightest of lies and if he wanted Bucky to trust him he had to tell the truth as much as possible. Plus it was basically impossible for him to lie no matter how hard Obi had tried to teach him. He just wasn’t good at being anything but painfully honest like ninety percent of the time because his lies had a tendency to be outrageous and not at all believable. The number of media scandals he had caused because of that irritated the hell out of Pepper, who was the second person to try and teach him to lie in an attempt to make her job easier. The poor woman really did deserve a raise for cleaning up all is messes. He supposed the only one who enjoyed his inability to lie was Rhodey’s mom, who had always given him those Looks as a child that scared the hell out of him and he always ended up ratting himself and Rhodey out.

Bucky doesn’t acknowledge his words, just sits there for a few minutes looking lost and confused. Poor guy, Tony thought, he escaped one hell to get stuffed into another. He had read some of the files, the ones he could stomach, that had said he was in cryostasis in between his missions so he wouldn’t recover memories and that he was regularly wiped of his memories when he was out via electrical shock. This wasn’t the same level of shitty Tony supposed, but it wasn’t exactly an improvement.

“What will you do with me?” Bucky asks.

Tony frowns, “what do you mean, exactly?” he wasn’t exactly sure he wanted clarification on that but Bucky needed security more than he needed his last meal.

“HYDRA wanted an assassin among other things, S.H.I.E.L.D wants HYDRA’s weapon and the information that comes with it, so what do you want?” Bucky asks.

Tony shifts in his seat and sighs, “first of all you are not HYDRA’s, nor are you S.H.I.E.L.D’s, people aren’t objects nor are they weapons, you are not a thing to be owned and used as some faceless figurehead pleases. You’re a person and you should have the freedom to choose what happens to you, also some of the wires in your arm need to be replaced and I can fix that,” he says.

Bucky looks confused, “I don’t understand. You gain nothing from this,” he says, “your actions make no logical sense.”

“I do benefit from taking you in, I love technology and you have an entire mystery arm of it that I’d love to look at. Besides, this isn’t about whether or not I benefit from getting you out of here, this is about _you_ benefiting from being out of here,” he says. He was still confused on who would have had access to the tech that was in the arm, especially for the period of time they did. Both he and Howard made things that went in there and that wasn’t quite right. 

“It doesn’t matter what benefits me, I’m not important,” Bucky says, his confusion seemingly sending him into a panic, unable to process himself as a person rather than an asset.

Tony was so not equipped to deal with this, “you’re a person, that’s enough to make you important,” he says, frowning at Bucky’s words. Bucky clearly doesn’t know how to handle this and begins shaking his head, obviously taking a turn for the worst. Thankfully Tony’s phone rings and he dashes out of the room before he has to deal with things.

Tony intercepts Steve just after Coulson does and he practically shoves the guy out of the way, “pay attention to me,” he blurts, well aware of how that sounded.

Steve laughs, thankfully, “demanding,” he says playfully, grinning.

“As always,” Tony says, playing like this was his plan all along, “now I need you to not lose your shit, oka-” he’s shoved out of the way by Coulson.

“Tony Stark has never really been a stable, trustable person-” Coulson starts and Tony shoves him back out of the way.

“I don’t even know how to lie you asshole, I suck at it!” he snaps, irritated that he would be painted as an unstable liar to prevent Steve from finding out about Bucky.

Coulson shoves him back out of the way, “please, you lie to S.H.I.E.L.D all the time-” he starts and Tony shoves him back out of the way.

“I don’t lie, I selectively tell the truth, you people ask some intensely personal questions!” he protests, they didn’t need to know stuff about Yinsen. Coulson moves to shove him back out of the way but Steve lays a hand on his shoulder and one on Tony’s because he could probably sense Tony was going to shove Coulson out of spite, the little bastard, fuck him. But not literally.

“What is going on,” Steve says, using the Mom Voice. Oh, Coulson had done it now, what a dick.

“Nothing, I can assure you that-” Coulson starts and Tony cuts him off.

“Oh no you don’t, they totally found Bucky in a HYDRA facility frozen and he has been used as an assassin and probably a bunch of other really crappy stuff and he’s super traumatized and S.H.I.E.L.D has basically been low-key torturing him to get information and the only time they don’t do that is when I’m around,” Tony blurts and he takes a breath, “suck on that, Coulson,” he sticks out his tongue.

“Are you being serious right now or is this some sort of insensitive joke?” Steve asks, all emotion leaving his face. Well shit, that only happened when something was genuinely upsetting to him.

“Yes I’m serious, Jesus, I wanted to stick it to Coulson not tear out your fucking heart, though it appears I have successfully done both,” he says, joking because that was what he did when shit got real. It was easier to avoid his problems by telling a lame joke than it was to actually deal with stuff.

“What?” Steve says, obviously not processing what was going on.

Tony sighs, “Come with me,” he says and pulls himself from Steve’s grasp, gesturing for him to follow and walking towards Bucky’s room.  

Coulson seems to get his shit together then and follows along, trying to deter Steve with no real success. Tony felt viciously vindicated that Coulson and his heartless S.H.I.E.L.D duchebags were going to have to deal with this and release poor Bucky. He’s almost at the door when he remembers the condition he left Bucky in and starts to panic a bit, “um, just let me make sure he’s okay, he’s a bit fragile. Yeah, um, be right back,” he says and ducks in the door in an attempt to avoid his issues only to walk into more issues. He really sucked at escape methods.  

Bucky was staring blankly ahead, seemingly not seeing anything in front of him, “umm… are you okay?” Tony asks, wandering closer slowly.

Bucky blinks a couple times, coming back to reality, “I’m okay,” he says. Tony isn’t an expert but he’s fairly certain Bucky was not fine but he leaves it.   

“Great, I, ugh, know a guy that you knew,” he says and Bucky snaps to attention then, “Before HYRDRA,” Tony specifies.

Bucky looks confused, “there was no time before HYDRA,” he says matter-of-factly.

Tony sighs, “I’m pretty sure HYDRA told you that and they aren’t exactly reliable,” he tells him, “trust me, he won’t hurt you,” he says and Bucky processes this, nodding after a minute or so.

Tony holds his breath and opens the door, revealing a still shocked looking Steve. Behind him Coulson looks pissed and Tony shrugs, they should have just given Bucky up if they didn’t want to deal with this mess. “Bucky?” Steve asks, breaking the silence.

Bucky frowns, “who the hell is Bucky?”                                                            


	5. Chapter 5

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Bucky asks, frowning. Tony winces, he forgot to warn Steve that he’d been avoiding Bucky’s name, hoping he’d remember it on his own but that hadn’t happened yet. The files said it could take as little as two days for him to start remembering but as long as three months, that was a huge gap and it seemed Bucky was going to be clueless at least for a little while longer. Or not, if Steve had anything to say about it.

“Ugh, you’re Bucky,” Tony says into the awkward silence, regretting how bluntly he had told Steve about Bucky now. He should have been more concerned with Steve’s feelings than sticking it to Coulson. He could have at least tried to be gentle if he hadn’t gone the insensitive asshole route.

“You know my name?” Bucky asks, giving Tony suspicious looks, “why didn’t you tell me?”

He sighs, “I was hoping you’d remember on your own,” He says, “but seems how Steve has let the cat out of the bag your name is James Buchanan Barnes but everyone calls you Bucky,” Tony tells him.

“What else do you know about me?” he asks, upset that Tony had kept information from him.

“Ugh, not actually a lot, at least not firsthand knowledge. I know that you fought in World War Two with Captain America, Steve,” Tony gestures to Steve, “you were his best friend, his lover at one point, and you died in the middle of a mission with him. Except you aren’t actually dead, the details are a little fuzzy there,” he says.

Steve looks confused, “you know way more about Bucky than that,” Steve says, probably trying to help but failing miserably.

“No, I don’t, most of my knowledge comes from pop culture and history text books and you’ve pointed out so much mistakes from both of those things that I’ve deemed those sources unreliable at best,” Tony says. Actually most of the information collected on him was false according to Steve, including his birth place. Apparently he wasn’t actually born in America, both him and his mother were Irish immigrants who had come over when Steve was a baby. Tony figured that was changed because Captain America not actually being born in America wouldn’t sit well with some people.

“I guess you make a point there,” Steve says, eyes still on Bucky. Poor guy, he thought his best friend was dead and ended up finding out his fate was much worse than that. Tony really couldn’t relate, he’d have no clue what he would do in Steve’s situation aside from freaking out and freeing Rhodey from S.H.I.E.L.D’s clutches. He supposed he empathized more with Bucky in this situation, they had suffered totally different situations but Tony understood all the same.

“Do I know you?” Bucky asks, squinting at Steve. Maybe he found Steve familiar, Tony hoped he did, the sooner he recovered his memories, at least the ones that weren’t him being tortured and forced to kill people, the sooner he could make a recovery. Steve, poor fucking Steve, barely showed a reaction but Tony could still see the hurt there.

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly, almost whispering, “You know me, or you did, it’s kind of been awhile,” he says, making a sorry attempt at a smile.

Bucky tilts his head to the side, examining Steve, “you weren’t with HYDRA, you’re a good person, the best I ever knew…” he trails off, blinking in confusion, likely unsure of where that knowledge came from.  

Steve huffs out a laugh, “no, not really. You always put me on a pedestal I had no business being on, always thought I was some kind of hero,” he whispers, clearly not believing whatever Bucky’s past words were.

Bucky frowns, “I have no idea what any of that means but I’m pretty sure I’m right and you’re wrong,” he says, sounding surprisingly sure of himself.

Steve laughs, genuine this time, “you have been spending way too much time with Tony,” he tells him.

Tony makes an offended noise, “he has spent just enough time with me, thank you very much,” he says in his own defence.

For the first time since Tony had met him Bucky smiles, it was barely there but he totally counted it. He was doing a good thing here, he could feel it.

*

It turned out Steve was fucking terrifying when he wanted shit done,  like almost scarier than Pepper and not even the terrorists that kidnapped him were scarier than Pep. Steve was good though, he knew what he meant to the people around him and he knew how to use it, which had come as a surprise to Tony. In the near five months he’s known him he’s never seen Steve as anything but the upstanding citizen and now he was flat out manipulating the people around him, blatantly using the weight he carried as Captain America to his advantage. This was a Steve Rogers Tony didn’t know but he kind of wanted to get to know him, he wanted to know the guy who cared enough about his best friend to violate his own beliefs to bust him out of S.H.I.E.L.D. Besides, Steve playing the Captain America card was kind of hot. Tony was pretty sure he could get his hands on a Cap costume, if Steve would cooperate Tony had plans, lots of plans.

In the end it took less time than Tony had expected, S.H.I.E.L.D had tried to insist on escorting Bucky back but Steve had given the team of agents a murderous glare that sent them running, almost literally. “Is he always like this?” Bucky asks, lingering by the open door, unsure if he was allowed to step out. Tony thought it should count as cooperation that Bucky didn’t just escape custody when he could have at any point, he had both the skills and the strength, but other than that first day they met Bucky hadn’t seemed inclined to make a break for it.

“Actually no,” Tony tells him, “usually he’s… softer, less scary, still hot, but I a different way,” he says.

Bucky snorts, almost a laugh, Tony was impressed by the near immediate improvement after being exposed to Steve. There was a familiarity there and he knew Bucky felt it, he just didn’t know why yet. That was good, for Bucky at least, but it made Tony worry about his relationship. He knew that was selfish to care about his relationship with Steve instead of Bucky’s but he was only human, and he had a good thing with Steve. Good things only ever happened to him in the form of his bottom line, he knew money could buy a lot of things, but it had never been able to buy him a meaningful relationship. The closest he got was Pepper, who had probably only formed a connection with him by accident, in the beginning she was only interested in her job. “I can see why you love him, he’s obviously willing to do whatever he feels is necessary to help the people he loves,” Bucky says.

Tony makes a face, “no one said anything about love, bud,” he says, his stomach swooping. He was not in love with Steve, he didn’t even believe in romantic love. That was for children and people who wanted their heart stuffed into a blender, which was not what he wanted, thanks.

Bucky looks confused, “are you unaware that you’re in love?” he asks, tilting his head.

“I am not unaware, I’m not in love, how the hell would you know that anyways?” he says, trying to deflect.

“It was in my training, exploiting personal relationships can be key in locating a person, I wouldn’t worry about people trying that with you though, you’re very morally grey. You’d probably only cooperate as long as it suited you, then you’d try, and likely succeed, in escape. You’re very intelligent despite what the S.H.I.E.L.D agents think,” Bucky says matter-of-factly.

Tony examines him for a second, “one, how do you know about that?” there was no way he could have known about the terrorists, “and two, what the hell else have the S.H.I.E.L.D agents been saying about me?” he asks, offended that at least one of them had insulted his intelligence.

“How do I know what?” Bucky asks, confused, “and the S.H.I.E.L.D agents seem to think you’re a narcissistic twit with low self-control and intelligence. I’m not exactly sure where their evidence comes from because I have found that almost all of that information is untrue. I have found ample evidence for narcissism but also very low self-worth, though you have low self-control you are not a loose cannon, you know exactly what you are doing and how to get your desired result. I think that makes you dangerous but not for the same reasons they do, and you are by no means unintelligent. S.H.I.E.L.D seems to think you have no knowledge of how people work, you seem to share that belief, but I don’t believe that is true. You know exactly how people work, but people bore you, you like excitement and new things and you don’t find that in people so you look for it elsewhere. You do, however, know exactly how people work, but you only use that knowledge when it suits you and the knowledge is so ingrained that it seems natural to you, which is why you seem unaware of your ability to read people” Bucky tells him.

Tony raises an eyebrow, that was a lot of information, “okay, so you don’t know about the terrorists?” he asks, just to clarify things, “and I can assure you, I have no fucking clue how to read people,” he says, “trust me, my personal relationships reflect that.”

Bucky shakes his head, “your personal relationships likely reflect a mix of your extreme control issues and you inability to remain interested in a person once you figure them out,” he says.

Tony makes a scandalized noise, “I do not have extreme control issues!” he says, covering the arc reactor with his hand.

Bucky snorts, “Yes you do, I’ve heard the agents talk about your refusal to explain my arm to them, you don’t tell them for three reasons. One, it’s a way to control them, two, you don’t deem them worthy of knowledge of your technology, and three, you don’t want them to know anything about me lest they use it to control me. The last one confuses me, I don’t know why you care what S.H.I.E.L.D does with me,” he says, brows drawing together in confusion.

Tony crosses his arms, “I care about what S.H.I.E.L.D does with you because I don’t trust them, they seem to want you for the same reasons HYDRA did and that doesn’t sit well with me,” he says.

“Control issues,” Bucky says.

“That is not control issues, that is empathy” he says, offended.

“Sure, and control issues. Granted you don’t want to control me yourself, you seem to think I should have control over myself, but it’s still control issues. So those terrorists you mentioned, are they the reason for that strange chest light of yours?” Bucky asks, making the worst conversation transition Tony had ever witnessed.

“I do not have control issues, and yes, the terrorists are the reason I have the arc reactor, I’m surprised it took you this long to ask” Tony tells him, figuring the knowledge was relatively useless to Bucky. Steve had been polite and waited a good week before asking and Tony had been eagerly anticipating it, happily telling Steve what it was and how it worked. When Steve pointed out that he hadn’t explained why he had it he changed the subject.

“You wouldn’t have given me the information while S.H.I.E.L.D was listening,” Bucky says, “so I waited until they weren’t.”

“Huh, clever,” he says, only half paying attention because Steve was telling off some S.H.I.E.L.D agents and that was quality entertainment.

“You don’t seem to view me as a threat,” Bucky says from behind him, “that’s very stupid,” he says.

Tony is aware that he could take that as a thinly veiled threat but he didn’t read it that way, “If you wanted me dead I would be, you could have gotten out of here a long time ago. You have more than enough skill to not get caught again too, but you stuck around for a reason and I suspect that hasn’t gone anywhere,” he says, still only half paying attention. Bucky makes a humming noise behind him, like he acknowledged the words and filed them away for later.

*

Tony fixes the wires in Bucky’s arm and runs a couple of scans before releasing Bucky to do whatever he wanted within the living space of the Tower. He also stuck a tracking device on there for security purposes, but he didn’t tell Bucky that. Frankly that was more of Steve than any other reason; at least if Bucky disappeared he could find Bucky relatively easy again. Predictably Bucky fled from human contact as soon as Tony released him so Tony went to find Steve to hopefully explain himself.

He finds Steve on the roof, overlooking New York, “hey,” he says softly, approaching with caution.

Steve turns around quickly and Tony braces himself to get yelled at but Steve hugs him instead, “oh, um, I guess you don’t hate me then?” he asks, still nervous.

Steve pulls away and looks at Tony with a mix of hurt and confusion, “why would I hate you?” he asks, genuinely confused.

“I… well I deliberately kept Bucky a secret for two weeks, I mean shouldn’t that… piss you off or something?” he asks. He’d probably be pretty pissed, it wasn’t as if he had a very good reason to keep Bucky to himself either.

Steve laughs, wiping a tear from his cheek, “god you are so fucking clueless,” he says, “I don’t hate you, and you didn’t really keep Bucky a secret either. You told me all about him, what little progress you had with him, his conditions, his health. You told me everything but his name and that information is _so_ much more to me than you not telling me who he was right away,” Steve tells him, pulling him back into a hug.

Tony buries his face in Steve’s chest, “thank god,” he whispers unintentionally.

*

Bucky watches them from above, interested to see what kind of relationship Steve and Tony had. From what he gathered it was a loving one, though Tony seemed unaware of this, worried that Steve would leave him though Steve showed no signs of wanting to go. When Steve kisses Tony he feels weirdly jealous, only he’s not sure if he’s jealous of Tony kissing Steve or Steve kissing Tony. He frowns and decides to leave them to their business and go examine his new living space, hopefully without the interruptions of Tony’s creepy disembodied voice that lived in the walls.

*

The last thing on Tony’s mind was Howard Stark; frankly he had bigger and less dead problems to deal with. Like Bucky going missing, or at least that’s what Steve had thought initially but Tony had tracked him to Brooklyn, close to where he would have lived with Steve. He figured Bucky was starting to get memories back and he was drawn to places that he once knew. He also had to deal with Pepper, who was upset that he had missed another dead line but he made it up to her by having a few projects done, including the one he had been behind on. He figured she’d be happy about that, particularly because stocks and profits would go up with new stuff on the market.

He probably should have been watching where he was going but he was rather used to people moving out of his way so sue him. However it didn’t change the level of surprise he got when he ran into his dead father’s clone in a Starbucks, literally, spilling Howard’s drink down the front of his very expensive suit. To be fair Not Howard Howard looked really embarrassed, “oh my god, I am so sorry!”

Tony flicks the iced coffee off his fingers, “I’m going to let that go because I had some great sex this morning, now if you’ll excuse me,” he says, stepping around Not Howard.

Unfortunately he jumps in the way, “wait, let me buy you a coffee, also,” he shakes his now empty cup, “I kind of need a new one.

He deliberates for a couple seconds, “why not, you’ve already thrown your drink on me, it’s not like this can get worse,” he says. He probably shouldn’t be mean to the poor guy because he looked like someone else but it had just slipped out. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a lil bit of racist language, language in the 40's was obviously not the same as it is now.

He probably shouldn’t do charity that didn’t involve him throwing money at things, he was good at throwing money at things, he was not good at trying to have a conversation with Not Howard. To be fair his dead father’s clone did enough chattering for the both of them. If he had thought this was his father before he sure as hell didn’t now, first of all the guy idolized him, second, his father never talked this much ever. He lets Not Howard chatter away, occasionally making a noise of acknowledgement, or answering a tech question, the guy had like a million. At least he knew what he was talking about, Tony was so sick of nerd types pretending like they actually understood his tech when they barely knew how to use it.

“You seem more… talkative on T.V. Not that I think you’re what the media makes you out to be, half the time you’re a hero and the other half you’re a villain, you can’t be both,” Howard says and winces.

He probably would have continued talking but Tony cuts him off, “sure you can, I am the most generous and narcissistic asshole you’ll ever meet,” he says, “also I think it’s really weird how much you look like Howard but you act nothing like him. Like at all, I think you’ve said more to me in the last five minutes than he had in seventeen years of my life,” he says. The most he usually got was a disgusted face followed by an eye roll and Howard walking away or Howard telling him to fuck off.

“Thank god, I googled your father, he seems like a real asshole. And I don’t think you’re much of an asshole, your just… exclusive with who you deem worthy of your time,” Howard says, smiling.

_Howard gives him a cold look, almost seeing through him rather than looking at him. “Be careful with who you associate with Tony, you need to be… exclusive with who you deem worthy of your time,” he says, brushing past him._

_Tony frowns, “but I like Rhodey,” he says, turning around to follow his father’s movements._

_Howard turns to face him, looking down at him from half way up the stairs. He regrets saying anything now, he hated it when Howard looked down on him, which was all the time, but in this position it was worse. “Rhodey is dead weight,” Howard tells him, “frankly so are you but your mother insisted someone had to run the company when I retired,” he mutters, continuing up the stairs with no care of how that made Tony feel._

_He turns around and finds Rhodey lingering in the door way, “I don’t think you’re dead weight,” he says quickly, trying to right his father’s wrongs._

_Rhodey looks surprised and hurt, “you think I care what he thinks of_ me _?” he asks, “did you not hear what he said about you?” Rhodey looked so mad and Tony loved him for it, really, but it wasn’t really necessary. He was used to this kind of thing by now._

_“Whatever, that doesn’t matter. He’s wrong about you,” Tony says._

_Rhodey shakes his head, “god Tony, I don’t care what he thinks of me, he’s a racist and I’m a black kid, that’s just how it is,” he says, “but what he said about you? That’s just not right; you’re not dead weight Tony.” He walks over and hugs Tony hard and Tony clings somewhat embarrassingly but Rhodey lets him._

_“You’re not dead weight because my dad is a racist and you’re a black kid, you can’t help that,” he tells Rhodey._

_Rhodey snorts, “and you should have to deal with your dad being an asshole because you were born?” Rhodey asks, “I don’t think so,” he says fiercely._

_Tony laughs humourlessly, “I don’t really get a choice,” he says quietly._

_“Yeah you do, Tony,” Rhodey tells him, “you deserve better.”_

That had been the first time in Tony’s life that he had ever felt like he was worth something and since then he and Rhodey had been best friends, always looking out for one another. Admittedly that was usually Rhodey looking out for him, but he repaid the favour every once and awhile. “My dad used to say that,” he says, looking out the window. He spots a familiar red head and swears, “Shit, that’s Pep, I’ve got to go before she eats me alive,” he says, grabbing his stuff and running out before he had to deal with things. He always had been good at that, running away.

*

He actually managed to get a large amount of work done, mostly because he didn’t want to focus on the freakish familiarity that Not Howard had to Actual Howard. Pepper let him work in relative peace, sensing that he needed the distraction. She comes in sometime later, “you have no idea what time it is, do you?” she asks, sitting in one of the chairs across from his desk.

He shrugs, “I don’t know, dinner time? I should probably call Steve to tell him I won’t be home…” he says, trailing off.

Pepper sighs, “It’s one in the morning, Tony, I already called Steve. He’s worried about you,” she says softly, “what’s going on? You only get like this when something stresses you out.”

He considers lying but Pepper knew him to well for that, “honestly it’s nothing, I’m just being stupid,” he says, running his hand through his hair.

“I don’t know what’s going on, Tony, but you aren’t being stupid. You’re upset and that matters, what’s going on Tony?” she asks, concerned for him.

He sighs, “I… I don’t know. I ran into this guy and he looks _exactly_ like Howard, and he has like this weird obsession with me and… and I’m just being dumb and it doesn’t matter,” he says.

Pepper comes around the desk, “Tony, of course it matters. I know what kind of memories Howard brings up, you’re not being acting irrationally. Now let’s get you home, you can cuddle with Steve, we all know how much you like to cuddle even if you pretend to hate it,” she says, shooing him out of his chair, “and I told Steve you haven’t eaten so expect him to make sure you actually eat before going to bed, not claim you did until Dummy starts following you around with toast that you refuse to eat.” He whines like he always does when Pepper does this but he secretly enjoyed when she took time out of her day to care for him, she didn’t need to do that and it made him feel special when she did. He was fairly certain Pepper knew that too, she was good at reading people and he wasn’t exactly a challenge.

*

Howard’s first memory comes back not long after running into Tony at that Starbucks and making a fool of himself, again. He just barely gets back to his hotel room, feeling like absolute shit and stumbles into the bathroom, headed straight for the toilet.

_“The results were better than expected,” Erskine says, making notes on some loose sheets of paper. So disorganized, Howard would never be so careless. He may work in a mess but it was an organized mess and everything was kept in notebooks, not all willy-nilly on loose sheets._

_“What did you expect?” he asks. Of course Steve was a success, Howard had never doubted him, people like Steve didn’t just fade off the planet, they left their mark for generations to see._

_“To be honest, death. That’s how all the other experiments went,” he says, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose._

_Howard raises an eyebrow, “there was a success,” he points out, “but apparently he wasn’t good enough,” he raises an eyebrow._

_Erskine sighs, “Yes, there was one success but he… wasn’t what they were looking for for Captain America,” he says quietly._

_“You mean he’s a nigro,” Howard says bluntly. Frankly he didn’t understand the problem, Captain America was supposed to be a symbol, not a person, what did colour matter? Either way the result was the same, people rallying together to fight for their country._

_Erskine drops his pen, “yes, that’s what I mean. It can’t be helped I guess, besides, Steve has a more… fitting personality for the job. He has great things ahead of him,” he says._

_“I am well aware,” he says, “have you got anything else up your sleeve?” he asks. Erskine seemed to dabble in all the things he liked, namely things that were dangerous and ridiculous and usually resulted in something blowing up._

_“Nothing that I’d let you get your hands on, lord knows you’d made an absolute disaster of my work,” he says, getting up out of his chair, “we should probably check on Steve.”_

_“Are you sure he’ll be up for that?” he asks. The serum had taken its toll and he had looked rather exhausted when he had come out of Erskine’s machine._

_“He’s a super soldier Stark, of course he’s fine. And if he isn’t I suppose we’ll have some data to record.”_

He pulls himself out of the toilet he had practically shoved his head down, confused, what the hell had just happened? Was that… a memory? And how the hell would he have a memory of Howard Stark’s? He flushes the toilet, washes his mouth out and flops back down onto the bathroom floor, leaning against the tub still feeling shitty. He hears the door open but he doesn’t have the energy to shut the door, he was exhausted and falling asleep and nauseated. “Howard?” he hears Selene say but she sounds far away, “Howard?” she asks again.

This time he manages to crack his eye open, “mmm?” he mumbles. Her face swims into view and he attempts to smile, “you’re pretty,” he slurs.

Selene laughs, shaking her head, still looking worried, “what happened?” she asks, brushing his hair out of his face.

“I dunno, some sorta memory or something,” he mumbles, “I met Captain America,” he says, trying to grin but mostly failing.

“Fuck,” he hears Selene mumble but he’s falling asleep fast, “I knew New York was a bad idea, you never should have come back.”

Howard frowns, “I’ve never been to New York,” he murmurs, finally slipping off into a deep sleep.                                                     



	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this need to asexual Tony who has no idea sexual attraction is a thing and is upset when people tell him the whole world was not playing a joke on him. Maybe I'll write that tomorrow lol. For now, here y'all go!

Steve kept trying to force healthy food on him and he was refusing to play that game. He was a person not a rabbit; he would eat whatever he pleased. Steve argued that all those cheese burgers couldn’t have been good for his diet but he didn’t care, he has almost died one to many times to care about whether or not his food might kill him. “Tony for god sakes it’s a peach, not a bomb,” Steve says, exasperated.

Tony snorts, “If it was a bomb I wouldn’t have this much of a problem with it, I used to make those, remember?” he points out. Steve is on one side of the counter and he is on the other, Bucky off to the side eyes following them as they circle around, watching Steve trying to catch Tony and force his death fruit on him. Tony was good at escape though so when Steve almost managed to catch him he dodged, smacking the peach out of Steve’s had as he did so.

“Ha, that’s what you get for forcing your shitty diet on me,” he tells him. Bucky catches the peach and frowns, sniffing it before shrugging and taking a bite.

“Bucky likes it,” Steve says, raising an eyebrow at him.

Bucky makes a face, “this taste like shit,” he says and throws the peach back to Steve.

“Ha, Bucky does not like peaches because Bucky has actual taste buds,” Tony says, grinning.

Steve sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose, “I have no idea what you have against fruit, you like sweet things, fruit is sweet,” he says.

Bucky frowns, “that fruit was hairy,” he says, looking upset that Steve had suggested that thing was edible.

“Fine, Bucky doesn’t like peaches, he never has, but that doesn’t mean you don’t,” Steve says, huffing.

“You let me eat that when you knew I wouldn’t like it?” Bucky asks, upset.

“See Steve, your fruit has _traumatized_ Bucky,” Tony says dramatically, “I am not eating something that is so nasty it can traumatize Bucky after all he’s been through,” he says, well aware that he was being ridiculous but that was his personality and Steve could suck it up. Bucky’s forehead wrinkles in confusion but he wisely stays out of the argument, choosing to watch it play out instead.

“Oh my god, Tony, Bucky is not traumatized by the fruit, he just doesn’t like peaches. _Why_ do always insist on being so damn dramatic?” he asks.

“It’s who I am,” he says, grinning. Steve looks annoyed but he gives up on trying to force Tony to eat the peach, thank god.

Steve tries again twenty minutes later with strawberries, which he says he’s allergic to, but JARVIS rats him out and tells Steve its Pepper that was allergic to strawberries, not Tony. This results in the lab being covered in strawberry goo after he and Steve get into a strawberry tossing contest that Steve wins by a mile. Tony tried, but he wasn’t exactly a super soldier and even with his machines sacrificing themselves to save Tony from the flying strawberries he was still no match for Steve. Bucky, he notices, lingers in the only clean corner of the room like some sort of creepy stalker, watching the proceedings methodically. Tony suspected he was trying to figure out how to function like a normal human being. Poor guy, he wasn’t going to find that observing Tony.

Eventually Tony gives up after Steve shoves strawberries down his pants because he simply refused to function with fruit in his boxers. Steve thinks he’s broken him but he was so wrong, Tony was putting a Tower wide ban on strawberries and peaches.

*

Steve had advised that Tony look up information on this Howard Stone person to, if nothing else, ease his mind. So after cleaning the strawberry mess, or more accurately having Dummy clean the strawberry mess, he follows Steve advice. It doesn’t take long for things to go from strangely coincidental to flat out weird. First he doesn’t actually find anything on Howard, which had been odd because Howard Stone was a pretty popular name. So he had done some finagling and maybe a little law breaking and hacked a bunch of security cameras to track down the hotel Howard was staying at to get information that way.

This resulted in finding his wife’s name, Selene Stone, so he ran that only to find a bunch of weird shit. He found records of various Selene’s dating back to the sixteen hundreds, which he would have ignored, except once the pictures cropped up with the name the woman looked exactly like the woman on the hotel security cameras. Frowning he had JARVIS run facial recognition scans on Howard and Selene, both coming back with one hundred percent matches. Tony sets that knowledge of Howard aside in favour of Selene because what the fuck?

He goes through all the records in attempt to rule out at least some of the identities that existed before pictures and instead found a string of similarities throughout all the identities. The name, for one, always had something to do with the moon and a stone, be it gem stones, types of rocks, or just stone. He had also noted a decrease in pictures once the camera became more popular, indicating that she obviously wanted to hide the fact that she was freaking immortal from people. Kids were also something of a strange phenomenon; she had kids in only one other past life, or at least had records of kids in one other past life. That meant that she probably found something desirable in Howard to have two kids with him but what?

He didn’t doubt the woman’s intelligence, she clearly knew how to cover her ass, only someone specifically looking for this information would find it and even at that they had to know what to look for. He goes through Howard’s records and finds dick all, most of the information he got was from his kids’ social media. His information consisted of Howard being in a car accident fifteen years ago, which he already knew, he now has two kids, he worked as a mechanic, and he had a weird obsession with all things Stark.

That left him with more questions than answers, like how the hell was Selene immortal? What did she do to de-age Howard? Whatever it was it didn’t stop him from aging, a picture of him holding Grant on Maria’s Facebook just after he was born compared to the way he looked now indicated that he was aging. Did the kids have any sort of powers? How could Selene conceive if she was frozen in time? What the hell encouraged her to have kids with _Howard Stark_ of all people? Why didn’t Howard remember anything from his past life? How has Selene gone unnoticed all this time? Surely he wasn’t the only one to notice her past identities. He sat back in his chair and sighed, frustrated, what the hell was going on here?

“Why are you frustrated?” Bucky asks, appearing out of nowhere to his left.

Tony jumps and nearly falls out his chair, “Jesus, don’t do that to me!” he says, hand over his arc reactor, “give a guy a little warning,” he says.

“Sorry,” Bucky mumbles, shuffling around awkwardly.

“Its fine, I’m fine. I’m frustrated because none of this makes any sense,” he says and outlines the situation to Bucky.

“So you need information?” Bucky asks.

He nods, shuffling some papers around on his desk, “Yeah, but I only have so many resources you know? Like what else am I supposed to do now without sounding nuts? Bucky?” he asks, turning around to find his work space empty, “good talk,” he mumbles to himself.

*

Tony does more digging but he doesn’t find much so eventually he gives up, at least for now, and goes to harass Steve and Bucky. So far Bucky had integrated fairly well, becoming steadily less suspicious of both Steve and Tony though he wasn’t fond of loud noises, beds, or strong scents but Steve said he’d never been fond of perfumes. Thankfully he thoroughly enjoyed showers, Tony didn’t think his nose could handle Bucky stink, or any stink for that matter. He had a sensitive nose and Steve after a workout was all his poor nose could handle and not for long no matter how hard Steve tried.

“Hey,” Steve says after Tony finds him on the roof and promptly plops himself in Steve’s lap, not particularly caring that Steve had been drawing. Steve knew to move his stuff anyways and mostly succeeded in saving his drawing so Tony didn’t feel too bad.

“I am so fucking confused,” he says, jumping right into the information he uncovered. Steve listened patiently, as always, and Tony was grateful. Steve was always so patient with him, most people got irritated with his constant need to talk, confusing it with narcissism or wanting to hear himself talk when he was just talking through the possibilities out loud. Steve recognized that and let him chatter mostly to himself until he ran out of things to say.

“That was wild from start to finish,” he says, laughing when Tony makes a face at his appropriating popular internet language. “You’ll figure it out, you always do,” he tells him. Tony smiles and curls closer to Steve, happily stealing his body warmth. Steve rearranges his position and sticks his drawing pad on Tony, apparently choosing to use him as a drawing stand.

“Excuse you, got your drawing pad off of me, I am a people, not an easel,” he says, pretending to be offended.

“That’s what you get for sitting on me,” Steve tells him and continues drawing. Tony, of course, suddenly gets the urge to wiggle around now that he can’t.

_“How do you deal with him?” Steve asks Pepper, frustrated with Tony’s antics._

_Pepper laughs, “Working with Tony is like trying to herd cats, it’s one hell of a process but once you get him interested he has laser-like precision until he loses interest again,” he says._

_Tony, for one, is very offended, “I am not like herding cats, I am very pleasant to work with, I’ve been told that on several occasions,” he says._

_Pepper rolls her eyes, “it doesn’t count when it comes from your very long string of one night stands,” she tells him, “you need to actually do your paper work, by the way, it’s illegal for me to forge your signature or I would have done it myself. Get it done,” she says and drops a large stack of paper on his lap before leaving, heels clicking as she went. Tony had no idea how she walked in those but knew he feared her due to her ability to run in them. He tried running out of a business meeting once only to find Pepper could match his pace. He didn’t try that again, he knew his place._

_“That’s a lot of paperwork,” Steve comments somewhat awkwardly after Pepper goes._

_Tony shrugs, “I’ll probably be able to get it done tonight if I actually focus,” he says. That was the problem, focus; he loathed paper work because it was so damned boring. He had so many better things to do than read things and sign things and… well, stare at paper all day._

_“That isn’t going to happen,” Steve says, apparently having no faith in Tony._

_“Oh excuse you, I will get this paper work done tonight,” he says with renewed interest in the subject. He picks himself and the paperwork up and goes to leave, headed to his lab so he’d have peace and quiet._

_“Hey Tony,” Steve says but then stops for some reason or another. When Tony turns around to face him Steve is blushing furiously._

_He grins and wanders closer, “spit it out Steve,” he says. He had come to love Steve’s questions about the twenty first century because they were usually so out of touch. He answered them with minimal poking fun and made sure Steve was clear on whatever subject. Once he understood the concept he was free game though and Tony had a lot of fun laughing at Steve’s confusion. To be fair Steve laughed almost as much about his misconceptions about Captain America and the events of World War Two so he figured they were even._

_“Well… I… you have a healthy sex life from what I read…” he trails off, looking deeply uncomfortable._

_“Oh my god, are you asking my to get you laid, because if you are congratulations on making this the best day of my life,” he says, leaning forward in interest._

_Steve rolls his eyes, “oh my god, Tony that’s not where I was going with this like, at all. I… you… oh for god sakes, I know you said that only idiots actually care about sexual orientation but… but,” Steve sputters, suddenly losing steam._

_“Oh my god, is this gay panic! I’ve only read about this!” he says excitedly, “if you’re asking if I care if your gay or whatever the answer is no, it’s not like I haven’t screwed a guy or two or… well a lot more than that, but you get the point,” he says._

_Steve looks a little more relaxed, “okay, but how come no one talks about that? Sexual orientation still seems to be something people find report worthy so…” he flops his hand around, losing words._

_“No idea, but my best guess is that ‘genius, billionaire, playboy’ Tony Stark is more profitable than ‘thirty three year old with two friends, PTSD, anxiety issues, an inability to enter meaningful relationships, and occasionally fucks guys’ Tony Stark. The first one is living the American Dream, the second one is kind of a downer,” he says, making a face._

_“Tony you’re more than both of those descriptions, and you don’t have an inability to enter meaningful relationships, you’ve obviously been hurt in the past and now you try to avoid that, it’s perfectly natural. Not exactly healthy, but reasonable nonetheless,” Steve says. Tony can see that he means the words and that’s sweet, really, but he knew how things were and he had come to terms with that a long time ago. It didn’t bother him much, not anymore._

_“Whatever, it’s fine,” he says, blowing it off like he always did._

_Steve gets up and walks over to him, “no it’s not Tony, you’ll find someone eventually, provided that’s what you want. Someone will realize how great you are,” he says._

_Tony snorts, “oh yeah, I’m great, that’s why I have two friends and I pay one,” he says. Pepper genuinely cared, he knew, but she also got paid very well to put up with his bullshit. It kind of put a damper on things._

_Steve frowns, “you pay me?” he asks then seems to come to the immediate realization that he was talking about Pepper, “Pepper actually cared about you and you know it, and you have three friends, thanks,” he says, looking offended._

_“You don’t count, you can’t escape, it’s like Stockholm syndrome,” he says._

_“Oh my god Tony, I do not have Stockholm syndrome. I don’t even know what that is, but I don’t have it,” he insists, “I’m here because I want to be, not because of some weird disease or something. I like being around you, why is that so hard for you to believe?” he asks, sounding upset._

_“Basically I’ve held you hostage for so long you actually kind of like me, Google it,” he tells Steve, “and I have a hard time believing you actually like me because no one does, believe me, I’ve tried making friends, it hasn’t worked,” he says, waving his hands around._

_“I am not a hostage, Tony. And has it ever crossed your mind that when people meet you they have a certain idea of who you are based on media depictions? You aren’t that person Tony, you’re more than the ‘super exciting party boy who does crazy stuff, wow’ guy that the media makes you out to be. People are disappointed to know that Tony Stark sometimes sits around and does nothing, watching Netflix and eating popcorn, or that you sometimes become so absorbed in your work that you forget what day it is, or that you have real issues like a real human being. People are disappointed that you’re more than three stereotypes slapped on a face, and they leave you thinking that you aren’t good enough when in reality you were more than what they expected and that’s the problem,” Steve says, putting his hand on Tony’s shoulder and squeezing, “I didn’t have that preconceived notion, neither did Rhodey, and Pepper is smart enough to see through that image. You might only have three friends, but they are three really good friends,” he says._

_Tony has no idea what to say to that, he had never considered that people were disappointed that he was multifaceted rather than a carbon copy of the media stories about him. “Thank you,” he says and he hugs Steve, for once glad that he had such a small friend group._

_Steve pulls away but not too far, staying in surprisingly close proximity. For a few seconds they just stared at each other, unsure of what to say or do in this situation. And then Steve leans down and kisses him and Tony nearly drops his paper work._

_Steve pulls away almost immediately and no, he was not allowed to do that, it was illegal, Tony decided, “what the hell was that?” he asks, gripping Steve’s arm before he gets any ideas about running away and never speaking to him again out of embarrassment, it’s what he would do._

_“Sorry, sorry, I should have asked-”_

_Tony rolls his eyes, “do you want to kiss me again?” he asks. Steve nods and Tony tosses his paper work over his shoulder, “Great!” he says and pulls Steve back into a kiss._

“Why are you laughing?” Steve asks, probably irritated that Tony was messing up his drawing.

“Gay panic, that was great. Also I maintain that you have Stockholm syndrome, poor Bucky is next,” he says even though he doesn’t exactly believe that. Bucky seemed to realize early that he could come and go as he pleased, Steve mostly preferred staying in.

Steve rolls his eyes, “I do not, and that was not funny, I was trying to be serious and you were gleefully waiting for me to say something wrong so you could laugh,” he says, making faces at Tony.

“Oh my god, you totally got me back for that, you convinced me that you fought Nazi dinosaurs when I was vulnerable and sleepy after being awake for four days at four A.M and Rhodey laughed at me,” he says, pouting.

Steve kisses him, “it’s hardly my fault you’re so gullible,” he says, nipping at Tony’s lip.

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you have to take advantage of my trusting state,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

Bucky, the asshole, interrupts the moment by dropping to the ground from where ever he was, scaring the shit out of Tony. He flails, sending Steve’s art supplies everywhere and he falls to the ground. Steve seems to find this hilarious and Bucky looks confused as to why Tony had such a violent reaction. “What did I tell you about making noise?” Tony yells.

Steve nudges his thigh, “no need to yell,” he says, raising an eyebrow at Tony.

“No need to descend from the motherfucking heavens and scare the shit out of the mere mortals either, but it isn’t stopping this asshole,” Tony says, flailing in Bucky’s general direction.

Bucky laughs, barely making a noise it was so soft, but it was there. Steve looks like someone just slapped him with wet bread he was so shocked but Bucky paid him not attention.

“You say you needed information, I got you some,” he says and hands him a thick file. Tony frowns and thumbs through it, finding a surprising about of information on Howard.

“How the hell did you get all this?” he asks.

Bucky smiles, lips barely tipping up, “I have my ways,” he says and walks away, leaving Tony confused and upset that he had a sore ass from landing on it.     


	8. Chapter 8

Tony did a lot of sorting through information, putting together a vague timeline of what happened to Howard after he “died” fifteen years ago. It wasn’t very eventful; aside from a job and two kids he had a relatively uneventful life. It was so unlike Howard, Tony thought, to be so calm. He didn’t like that he had things in common with Howard but he did, and one of those things was a need for constant excitement, something _new_ and if they didn’t get that they both got bored and typically did something stupid. It seemed New Howard didn’t have that hang up, or he was good at covering his tracks.

Bucky’s pictures told an interesting story by themselves, Howard appeared to be sick, the kids were worried, and Selene was weirdly agitated. Tony wasn’t an expert on body language, at least not this kind, but he knew the ‘oh shit this wasn’t supposed to go this way’ look when he saw it. People he did business with typically got that look when Tony managed to bully them into doing what he wanted instead of what they wanted. Whatever Selene had done to de-age Howard and remove his memories was obviously failing, or at least that was Tony’s theory. Now he wondered, assuming he was right, would Howard rapidly age and die? Was his de-aging permanent but the memory block not? Was the memory block permanent but the de-aging not and that’s why Howard was sick? He had no clue and that pissed him off, he hated not having an answer. That was partially what made him so good at business; he refused to let people walk away until he got a real answer, which typically resulted in him annoying people into agreeing with his terms.

He had eventually given up and gone to the office to distract himself with paper work and such. The last thing he expected was to walk into his office to find Howard hugging a trash can and Pepper standing off to the side, doing her best to not look disgusted. She was failing miserably but Howard didn’t notice and he forgave Pep, he was kind of grossed out too. “Ugh, hello?” he asks.

“Please explain what the hell is going on to me when he leaves,” Pepper says and flees the scene before she got roped into conversation.

Howard looked like shit; Tony was curious as to how he managed to talk Pepper into letting him in here, “you better not be contagious,” he says, “I don’t have time for the flu.” He circles his desk and sits down, swivelling in his chair to face Howard.

*

He wasn’t exactly sure what he expected from Tony, he had no real clue why he was there, only that he felt like he should be. “I ugh, I think I might actually be your father?” he says. God, that sounded crazy to his own ears, there was no way Tony was going to believe that let alone what little information Selene had been willing to put forward. He expected Tony to laugh and throw him out or… well he didn’t expect Tony to sit there and glare at him like if he made that face long enough Howard would crack and spill everything.

It turned out Tony’s glare did the trick because he quickly told Tony everything he knew, which wasn’t a lot. Tony’s face didn’t change whatsoever, zero reaction. Howard was vaguely impressed but with no real knowledge of why, being able to hold a facial expression didn’t seem pride worthy to him, but something in his past self seemed to recognize this as a good thing. Tony rolls forward in his chair, leaning against the desk, “so let me get this straight, fifteen years ago you were in a car accident and Selene pulled you out and healed you with some sort of magic powers? And in the process of healing you she stripped your memories and somehow de-aged you?” he asks, sounding disbelieving.

“Look, I know it sounds crazy but I’ve been getting all these memories and-” Tony cuts him off.

“How does it work? Selene’s power? Did she explain that? Like why did you de-age, why are all your memories gone? Why are they coming back? Will you age again too or was that permanent? And she’s fucking immortal or something so she shouldn’t even be able to conceive, how the hell does that work?” he asks in a rush.

“I um, she only explained a little. I… she said that she can… regenerate things, that’s why I ended up way younger than I was when she initially healed me, in my early twenties by her estimate. She’s not clear on why the memories go in the first place, she said something about time lines not being messed up but I didn’t really get it. The memories coming back, that’s because I’m surrounded by stuff that’s familiar to me. Old me, I’m not that person anymore. She doesn’t know why the memories come back, just that they do, or at least the important things. Stuff that old me didn’t deem important won’t come back. And um, I don’t know about immortal, she never said anything about that,” he says, frowning.

Tony nods, “your memories coming back indicate that her time line theory is shit, if her power was ever intended to keep timelines straight it would have existed to begin with. My best guess is that her rejuvenation theory is right, and that when she healed you and restores your youth it grew new brain cells or something, but it didn’t burn out what was already there. That’s probably why your memories are making a comeback. And she’s been alive since the sixteen hundreds at my best guess, give or take, a few of those identities could be relatives but I doubt it. Maybe that rejuvenation thing works with her too, that would explain her ability to have children, but it would mean that to heal you she would have had to kill someone else…” he says, trailing off in thought.

Howard frowns, “what do you mean she would have had to kill someone else, where did that come from?”

Tony sighs, “What I’m getting from this is that she can… transfer energy or something like that, the energy has the power to heal and make people young again. Energy doesn’t come from nowhere though, so when you got into that accident she either killed someone to heal you, or she healed you with her own energy and then killed someone to rejuvenate herself. My guess is that she killed mom to heal you, there was a third unknown person in the car she killed off, she killed mom but there wasn’t enough energy from mom to heal you so she used some of her own and half drained some other poor sap, or she healed you and killed some other person. Pick which is the least horrifying to believe, also that ‘stache was not cool when you had it as Howard Stark, it’s not any better as Howard Stone,” he says, gesturing to Howard’s upper lip.

“Wow, that’s a lot to take in. Uh… wait, you have records on Selene? Can I see them?” he asks. He was having a hard time believing any of this was true, this was _insane_ , it made no sense.

“No,” Tony says, “and fuck you,” he snaps.

“I… well I don’t really have any memories of you but from what I gather I wasn’t a very good father. I guess I deserve that,” he says, slumping in his seat, still holding Tony’s trash can close.

“Oh fuck off, that isn’t what I’m talking about. You named a kid after Steve, I don’t even care if it was his middle name, you still named Grant after Steve, and Maria was obviously named after mom. You know what who gets the name Tony? Your fat corgi! And you fed that thing so many treats it ended up morbidly obese and it got asthma and died! You killed Tony, Grant and Maria are fine, but you _killed the dog_!”

Howard frowns, “are you suggesting I kill one of my children?” he asks uncertainly.

“No you fuck; I’m suggesting you take care of Tony! All you had to do was give the fucking dog less food but you couldn’t even manage that, what the fuck? That isn’t even hard, how did you fuck that up? You know what, I came here to escape this mess, not land myself flat in the middle of it, I am out of here,” he snaps and stands up, fleeing the room quickly. Howard sits back in his chair, confused on what the hell just happened there.

*

“So let me get this straight, you yelled at who you are pretty sure is your father, who has been de-aged by some woman with weird healing powers, about a fat corgi that is supposed to represent you?” Steve asks, confused.

“No, the dog is the dog, I am me, no relation except for the name, which I am still pissed about. Fuck him for naming kids after you and a fucking pet he ended up killing after me,” he snaps, throwing his hands up.

Steve looks pinched, like he’s trying to hold something back before taking a breath, “pretty sure you’re only pissed about the dog because you think it represents you,” he says.

“No I’m not, I’m mad he fed the dog to death, why can’t he take care of Tony, all he did was eat, sleep, and shit because that’s what dogs do and he fucked up, he fucked it up and killed Tony!” he yells.

Bucky, who had been lingering in the doorway, starts sniffling, “are you crying?” he asks, “Because Tony’s death was not that sad,” Tony says.

Bucky sucks in another breath and lets out a loud wheeze and Tony realizes he’s laughing, it just sounded really weird because it’s been so long. “Oh my god, stop laughing at Tony’s death! It isn’t funny, the poor thing was neglected to death!” he says, deeply offended that Bucky would choose this to laugh at.

Steve, apparently no longer able to hold back, starts laughing too, “oh my god you yelled at your dad over a fat dog you think represents you. That’s not funny at all,” Steve says, doubling over he was laughing so hard. Bucky was clutching the doorway, now laughing more like a normal person than a weird robot.

“Stop bonding over my pain!” Tony says, scandalized, “you know what, I don’t need this right now. I’m going to go call Rhodey,” he says.

Twenty minutes later he was holding his phone away from his ear as Rhodey laughed his ass off, “I think you people are mean and I don’t like you,” he says, absentmindedly petting Bucky’s hair. He had fallen asleep with his head in Tony’s lap about a half an hour ago and it was adorable, he took like seven hundred pictures.

“I wonder if they called it ‘fat Tony’, you know, like a bad mob name,” Rhodey says, wheezing from laughter.

Tony gives the phone an offended look and he didn’t even care of Rhodey couldn’t see it, “they did not call the dog fat Tony!” he yells. Bucky startles and gives him the most terrifying glare he’s ever received in his whole life, which he finds impressive because he got glared at by Pepper regularly and he was kidnapped by terrorists that one time.

“They called the dog fat Tony,” Steve decides. Tony sticks his tongue out at him, he’d been in a pissy mood for the last half hour and Tony didn’t know why. Steve gives him a withering glare and wanders off to do whatever.

“Jeeze Steve is pissy pants,” he comments, wrinkling his nose at Steve’s retreating back.

“Well yeah, I would be too,” Rhodey says.

Tony frowns, “okay but why? Because I’m mad that Howard fucking killed Tony, because that was not my fault,” he says, waving his hand around. Bucky glares at him again because apparently he was wiggling around too much.

“No dumbass, because Bucky is sleeping in your lap. How are you so smart but so stupid?” he asks.

“Okay but why is that a problem?” he asks, returning to petting Bucky’s hair.

Rhodey lets out a long suffering sigh, like he was debating twenty five years of friendship in that moment. “If it was Steve with Bucky’s head his lap you’d be freaking out,” he points out.

“Ohhh, so basically he thinks it’s wildly inappropriate that I’m petting Bucky’s hair instead of like his or something,” he says.

Rhodey sighs again and Tony can practically see him pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, “basically, yes,” he says.

“But he’s so cute!” Tony says, twirling a strand of Bucky’s hair around his finger.

“Oh my god Tony, no one cares how cute Bucky is, get his damn head out of your lap. I should not have to tell you that is inappropriate,” he says, exasperated.

He shuffles a bit and Bucky glares at him again, “fuck that, I’m Bucky’s cushion until he moves, don’t you make those annoyed noises at me Rhodey, you didn’t see the look I just got. I can assure you actual terrorists are not this scary,” he says. Bucky considers him for a few more moments, making sure Tony isn’t going to take off on him before turning and resting his head on Tony’s leg again, shuffling around so he’s more comfortable.

“Jesus Christ man, you need to figure your shit out before Steve dumps your ass,” he says and hangs up.

Tony looks at Bucky, “you don’t think Steve will dump me for this do you?” he asks.

“Probably,” Bucky mumbles.

“Probably he’ll dump me or probably I’m wrong?” he asks. Bucky doesn’t answer because he’s an ass so Tony pulls himself out from underneath Bucky’s head and takes off after Steve, ignoring the irritated look Bucky gives him.

*

“Okay, but to be fair I have no history with Bucky, and like he’s hot and all, but a little too traumatized for me, like I don’t know what he’s comfortable with, he doesn’t know what he’s comfortable with, gets kinds sketchy there. Also I’m with you and I recognize now I probably should have said that first but I didn’t so…” he trails off, flapping his arms around, “the point is you don’t have to feel threatened by Bucky or whatever. I have no interest in leaving you for him or… yeah you get it. I think,” he says, wincing. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing, this was why he stuck to what he knew, namely sex. He was good at that, he’s had people tell him sex with him was like a religious experience it was that good, but relationships? It probably felt like a religious experience when they left.

Steve sighs, huffing out a laugh, “that’s not it. Well, it is, but not for the reasons you think. It’s just… I… he trusts you, you know? Like when you’re around so is he, and when you go he disappears too and I don’t know what to do with that,” he says, frowning at the skyline.

Tony considers his words for a second, “have you considered that maybe he doesn’t know how to feel about you? On one hand he probably feels _something_ for you, remnants of your old life together, but on the other hand HYDRA probably tortured him half to death to associate you with pain and suffering because he probably tried to go after you every time he remembered you. That has to be confusing, and when he meets you you know all this stuff about him that he doesn’t know about himself, and he has no clue who you are or what your intentions are. Me? I’m safe, he knows what he sees is what he gets, there’s no confusing memories with me, and when I’m alone with him I don’t look at him like I suddenly expect him to remember a life he isn’t even sure he had. He trusts me because whatever he feels for me isn’t confusing, and scary, and not all there, it just is and that’s probably reassuring,” he says, shrugging.

Steve laughs softly, “You should be a therapist,” he says.

Tony snorts, “Oh my god, literally two hours ago I was yelling at my dad, who is apparently not dead, about him killing his fat corgi named Tony, I don’t think I’m qualified to be a therapist,” he says.

“Sure you are, you’re just as fucked up as your patients would be, it’s kind of why I love you, you don’t judge me for being so messed up,” he says.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “did you just say you loved me?” he asks.

“That depends, are you going to be an ass about it?” he asks, “Because I would prefer you don’t panic and run or make a joke then panic and run,”” he says.

“I’m not going to panic and run,” he says, “or be an ass.”

“Fine, then yes, I love you Tony. I love literally everything about you, even your nasty habit of doing things without thinking about the consequences, and your gross habit of leaving hair on the shower wall,” he says.

“Thanks,” Tony says reflexively and Steve immediately looks pissed, “it was a reflex, it was a reflex! People tell me they love me all the time!” he protests.

“People don’t tell you they like and also hate when you leave hair on the shower walls all the time, Tony!” Steve says, crossing his arms and giving Tony a stern look.

“First off, you’d be surprised, and two, I love you too. I don’t find any of your bad habits endearing though, I don’t like when you try and feed me healthy food because I don’t care if it’s good for me, I will not sacrifice taste for you. And what is with your habit of getting up at six in the morning? And then you try to wake _me_ up but you’re mean and you try to wake me up with sex, which I’m obviously  going to wake up for, but then you expect me to _stay_ up and like do things and stuff? No, I am not doing that, I think it’s nice that you care about my health but I need you to stop that,” he says.

Steve sighs, “only you,” he says, shaking his head, “I’m not going to stop caring about your health by the way; I will get you to eat a peach if it’s the last thing I do.”

Tony snorts, “It’ll be the last thing _I_ do because your healthy things will kill me,” he grumbles.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Tony :( warning for child abuse and alcohol abuse.
> 
> The good news is that I totally got my five page essay done today and sent in! I didn't even proof read that shit but it's a first year course, I'll be fiiiiine lol.

He should have known, he and Howard, as much as he loathed admitting it, had quite a bit in common. Why he expected Howard to give up and go away he had no idea, neither him nor Howard were the quitter types, they were both annoyingly persistent actually. What he didn’t expect was for him to bring one of the replacement kids around, probably because he thought Tony wouldn’t be as snide if he had to worry about scarring a child for life. Well he was scarred for life on a regular basis as a kid and he turned out ok; he was sure a thirteen year old could fair fine. “And you’re here because?” he asks Howard, not bothering to keep up with any niceties. He’d been waiting his whole life to tell Howard to fuck himself and now that he had the opportunity he wasn’t about to let it go, the fact that he happened to be sitting in a company he created and Tony now owned made it all the better.

“I thought you said he was nice,” Grant mumbles to Howard.

“Eat shit, Grant,” he tells him, not caring that Grant hadn’t done anything wrong. He had a unibrow, that was reason enough for him.

“Hey!” Howard says, offended on his kid’s behalf. That was cute, he probably didn’t even know that he has said way worse things to him as a kid and he didn’t even have a unibrow.

Grant shrugs, “Maria has said worse,” he says. So Grant was passive, well that was boring.

“Look, I don’t actually care why you’re here; I just asked to be polite. Get out,” he says and starts shuffling papers around on his desk, pointedly ignoring the two people across from him.

“Okay, so can someone please explain what the hell is going on here?” Grant asks, glancing back and forth between Howard and Tony.

Howard looks pinched and Tony seizes the opportunity, “so it turns out fifteen years ago when my dad got into a car accident your mom, who has freaky healing powers by the way, save Howard’s ass presumably by killing someone and transferring their energy to him. This apparently healed his fatal wounds and regenerated his all the cells in his body, returning them to their former youth and voila, here we are. So basically by some fucked up and twisted turn of events I’m your half brother,” he says. Howard sighs and accepts defeat and Tony feels proud he managed to throw the asshole off his game. Sure, maybe he wasn’t the same guy, but that hardly meant he was about to forgive him for all he’s done in the past.

Grant frowns, “that’s the most ridiculous lie I’ve ever heard, it’s really creative though, you should make a story out that of that, I’m sure people will read it.”

Tony snorts, “I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried, frankly if this had happened a year and a half ago I probably would have thought this was ridiculous too but that was before I ended up housing Captain America and his traumatized best friend. I’m a little past ‘that isn’t scientifically possible’ by now. Also the mini arc reactor in my chest isn’t technically possible either but here it is,” he says, tapping the glowing front plate.

Howard’s head snaps up, “you found Steve?” he asks excitedly, “can I see him?”

Tony gives him an annoyed look, “fuck no! And no, I didn’t find him, S.H.E.I.L.D did,” he says. Grant blinks and looks between Tony and Howard again, obviously aware that he is behind on knowledge. “I was serious about telling you to fuck off by the way, I fully expect you two to leave within the next ten minutes,” he says, making a shooing motion with his hand.

“S.H.E.I.L.D is still in operation?” he asks,”that’s great!” he says, smiling.

Tony roll his eyes, “yeah, yippie, what an accomplishment” he mumbles.

“What did he do to you?” Grant asks, upset that Tony disliked his dad so much. Well at least Howard was nice to him and Maria, if only he got that luxury. He should have to be upset that he didn’t receive his father’s love, it should have been unconditional but he has never been so lucky.

“What did he do? Count your lucky stars you didn’t get the same dad I did, kid, because as a toddler I would have thought my name was ‘fuck off Tony’ if it wasn’t for my mom and my nannies, he told me to fuck off _that_ often. The best birthday I ever had was when I turned twelve, why? Because I got shoved down the stairs, why would that be a good thing? Well because Howard remembered my birthday for the first time ever and he acknowledged me long enough to shove me. I don’t think I was supposed to take a trip down the stairs but does that really matter? When I got into MIT I was eleven and Howard’s response? ‘What, do you want a gold star or something?’ When I got my first PhD at seventeen he was proud for like four seconds, which is the best four seconds I ever had with him by the way, until he found out it was in engineering. He then proceeded to tell me if I wanted the PhD to count I should have got it in something I wasn’t naturally good at because then it would be an actual accomplishment, not a confirmation of my pre existing knowledge. The best day of my life was the day I found out he was dead because for the first time in my life I didn’t feel like I was failing him because he wasn’t around to fail. How fucking sad is that?” he yells, throwing his hands up.

Grant looks horrified and Howard, for his part, looks pretty disgusted himself. Well it was good to know that Howard 2.0 wasn’t a piece of shit, how fucking comforting for him. _Not_. Of course Howard would come back as the Perfect Dad when Tony got shit on for seventeen years of his life. He still had a hard time accepting that he was actually successful because there was always something _more_ he could do, something better. That was how Howard looked at him and no matter how often the entire world told him he was enough he still heard Howard in the back of his mind telling him that he wasn’t doing anything he didn’t know he could, that he wasn’t really challenging himself at all. If he wasn’t challenging himself his success didn’t really count after all.  It drove Steve nuts and Tony didn’t know how to explain that his friend had been a really shitty dad so he mostly just alluded to it.

“I… I don’t remember any of that…” Howard says, frowning.

Tony snorts, “of course you don’t, Selene said you’d only remember what mattered to you and if I know anything about our relationship it’s that you didn’t give a fuck about me. Now get out,” he growls. This time they listen, mercifully.

*

Bucky looks confused, “I don’t understand, didn’t you way you always wanted your father’s approval? I mean from what I gathered he has some weird obsession with you, does that not count?” he asks, looking at Steve for help. Well, there was that, Bucky seemed to be growing more comfortable with Steve, even if it was only when Tony was around.

Steve shrugs and looks at Tony. He sighs, “I wanted my dad’s approval, not for him to be a groupie,” he says, wrinkling his nose at the thought.

“You have groupies?” Bucky asks, adorably confused by this.

“Yeah, Tony Stark fans call themselves ‘Starklings’, it’s actually kind of cute,”  he says, not that he would ever admit that on T.V or anywhere else. He was cool and aloof, like a cat, it was part of his image.

“Do Captain America fans have a name?” Steve asks.

“Yeah, patriots,” he says and Steve wrinkles his nose.

“No, like Captain America fans, not people with a very misplaced sense of pride in a country that isn’t really that great. Denmark is better,” he says, “the people are happier there.”

Tony laughs, “Not, Cap fans seriously call themselves patriots,” he says.

Steve rolls his eyes, “real fucking fucking original,” he mutters.

Bucky looks between them, “do I have fans?” he asks, “I know I was a side kick, but people like those. I think,” he says, looking pinched.

“’Buckybears’,” Tony confirms, “Named after the adorable Bucky bear, I had like ten as a child. I always made them date my Captain America bears and in a somewhat ironic twist of events I actually guessed the true nature of your relationship with my childlike hope and imagination,” he says. Howard had always hated that and insisted that Steve and Bucky weren’t together, Steve was with Peggy. Well it turned out he was wrong and he wished child Tony could tell Howard 1.0 to eat a dick because he was fucking right.

“I knew it!” Bucky says, “I knew we were dating, you told me you loved me to much too only be my friend,” he says, looking triumphant.

Steve looks shocked, “you remember things? About us?” he asks excitedly. Tony pretends he doesn’t feel like he ate a lead ball because he had more important things to worry about, and he’d also be a hypocrite.

“Sort of,” Bucky says, looking confused, “just bits and pieces. HYDRA never did manage to wipe your memory away completely, that’s why I could remember so fast sometimes. Other times it took me awhile because I wouldn’t see anything that reminded me of you, but you were always the reason I remembered,” he says. Wow, that was probably the sweetest fucking thing Tony had ever heard and it wasn’t from him to Steve. There was literally nothing he could do to beat ‘despite being brainwashed and tortured for seventy years or so I never forgot you, at least not for long’. Talk about feeling inadequate. He wanders off to let the two of them bond or whatever and tries not to feel like absolute shit.

*

He doesn’t really mean to end up drunk in a bar but that’s where Pepper finds him, slumped in a corner and pretending he didn’t exist. “What are you doing,” he asks, crossing her arms. So it was Strict Pepper than, he liked Caring Pepper better but apparently she thought he needed an ass kicking instead of a hug. He disagreed.

“Mmm drunk,” he slurs and tried to stand up straighter and nearly falls over because his eyeballs suddenly shift in his skull or the world starts tipping dramatically, one or the other.

“I can see that Tony, why are you drunk?” she snaps, apparently having no patience for him tonight.

“Because I’ma grown man,” he mumbles, “and I can do stuff.”

“Oh for fucks sakes, you’re a goddamn child. Let’s go,” he says and grabs his ear, pulling him by the lobe. He goes with her because he has little choice, she doesn’t even slow down when he stumbles.

Pepper deposits him in the back seat of the town car Happy drove to get collect him, “is he okay?” he hears Happy ask. He had no idea why Happy cared so much, he was never really nice to the guy, he wasn’t mean either, but he made Happy’s job a real pain in the ass.

“No,” Pepper says, “but he isn’t in the talking mood. Maybe Steve can change his mind, he’s good with Tony, I’m sure he’ll be able to help.” Tony snorts and curls up on the seat, not bothering with a seat belt, he probably wouldn’t be able to work one anyways. Pepper gets in not long after and rearranges him, including looping a seat belt around him, and she pets his hair. He smiles and shuffles closer to her for comfort. At least she wasn’t that mad; when she was really mad at him she took a cab home and made Happy drop him off alone.

The ride was relatively quite thankfully and Tony drifts in and out of consciousness, half paying attention to Pepper’s hand through his hair and half trying to ignore everything and sleep. “Why do you always do this to yourself?” Pepper asks quietly, probably to herself.

He was sure she wasn’t expecting an answer but he gives her one anyways, “cuz’it drowns it out. Better feel nothing than everything. Everything’s exhausting, numb is safe,” he mumbles, surprisingly coherent. Sober him was going to be impressed with drunk him in the morning, he could feel it, he managed to not fuck up ‘exhausting’. Pepper sighs and continues to pet his hair and he drifts off to sleep.

When he wakes up again he’s being pulled out of the car by someone who was not Pepper. Pep was strong enough to drag his ass around he was sure, but Happy knew his place. He cracks an eye open and spots Steve frowning at him. He closes his eye again so he can avoid judgement for a little while longer. “Hey Steve,” he says, mostly not slurring Steve’s name.

“I’m not Steve,” someone says and he cracks his eyes open again to find Bucky frowning down at him.

“Thank god,” he says and leans over Bucky’s shoulder, promptly throwing up all down poor Bucky’s back.

“Humans are disgusting,” Bucky mumbles, “I wish I was a cat. Cats are clean. And they don’t throw up on you.” Tony was pretty sure Bucky had never owned a cat because cat litter was gross, and hairballs were worse.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg my family drama has hit an all time high, the events of today have literally happened on soap operas. At least it set the mood for this chapter lol.

Tony woke up with a massive headache and his body hurt all over. He didn’t really remember much either, except the part where he threw up on Bucky, which, he supposed, wasn’t the most embarrassing thing he’s ever done drunk. Steve notices right away and because he is a very mean person he pulls the pillow Tony had shoved over his head away, “you have some explaining to do,” he says. Tony groans and shudders, curling into a tight ball and ignoring Steve at all costs, he had a hangover and that meant avoiding anything and everything until further notice. Steve pulls his blankets off and he swore Steve had purposefully turned the temperature down so Tony would get colder faster so he’d talk and get his blankets back.

“I got drunk and did something dumb, explanation over, give me my blankies,” he mumbles, face turned into the mattress while he grabs at the general space he thinks Steve has taken his blankets to.

He latches onto something and throws it over himself, jumping and throwing it back off when he realized it was freezing. “What the fuck was that?” he asks, shivering and trying to blink against the light streaming through his large windows. Why the hell did he even have those? Why would he do that to himself? “JARVIS pull the fucking blinds or something, damn,” he says, throwing his arm over his eyes and flopping back against the bed.

“That was a towel I stuck in the freezer for two hours, consider it pay back for throwing up on me,” Bucky says, sounding irritated with Tony. Well, he supposed he’d be upset if Bucky threw up on him too, but he would start throwing cold towels at people. That was just mean.

“JARVIS, the blinds,” Tony snaps, irritated with the AI’s slow response time

“Directive denied,” JARVIS tells him.

Tony throws his arm off his face, “excuse you? Pull the fucking blinds JARVIS,” he tells the AI, annoyed that JARVIS has decided to not follow his orders.

“It appears Steve has hacked my system and instructed me to ignore your orders until you talk to him,” JARVIS explains.

“Then unhack yourself, Damnit, Steve can’t be that good,” he says, curling into a ball facing opposite to the windows to avoid any direct light.

“I agree with my new directives, they are for the best, so I have decided not to change them,” JARVIS says.

Tony glares at the ceiling, “you’re fucking kidding me right?” he asks.

“I’m afraid not, sir,” Jarvis says, sounding regretful. He should probably look into JARVIS’s ability to accurately reflect emotions though voice inflections.

“I think it’s creepy that your wall voice has opinions,” Bucky says, giving one of JARVIS’s speakers a suspicious glare.

Steve crosses his arms, looking like a disappointed grandpa, “talk,” he tells Tony. He holds out for as long as he can but he’s a baby and he was cold and he wanted his blankets back so he tells Steve he’ll talk once he gets his bedding back. Steve complies and gives Tony his pillow and blanket, Tony takes his time wrapping himself up in the blankets and getting himself comfortable just to be an ass.

“Is anyone else concerned about the creepy wall voice?” Bucky asks, crawling onto the bed and stealing the section of blanket Tony had no yet wrapped himself in. He glares at Bucky but it seems to have little effect aside from Bucky pulling more blankets towards him.

“JARVIS is fine,” Tony tells him. He’s programmed JARVIS to not want to take over the world because humans were a mess and he, a complex computer code, should not want to bother.

“Now what’s going on?” Steve asks, sitting beside the cocooned mess that was Tony, draping his arm around him. Tony explains Howard’s office visit, some of his crap childhood, Selene’s explanation of what was going on, probably permanently ruining Grant’s perception of Howard.

“I guess it was just too much,” he says, leaning into Steve and yawning.

“That isn’t all,” Bucky says matter-of-factly, like he actually knew anything about Tony’s thought process. Tony glares at him so he knows that Tony does not agree with him.

“When we first met you said you were worried about your boyfriend because his ex was back in town, I’m the ex and you clearly haven’t gotten over your worries,” he says and frowns, “but why would you take me in if you thought I was going to cause relationship problems for you?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

Tony snorts, “I’m not going to punish you by leaving you with S.H.I.E.L.D just because you had the audacity to date Steve before either one of you even knew I was going to be a thing. That’s pretty shitty,” he says. Besides, he did keep Steve mostly in the dark for two weeks, which was crappy enough.

“Tony just because I loved Bucky then doesn’t mean I still love him, we’re both totally different people,” he says

“Hey!” Bucky says, looking offended.

“What? It isn’t like it’s not true, and it isn’t like I don’t care about you, I do, but I hardly know you and you don’t know me at all. Neither one of us are the people that fell in love,” Steve says, shrugging.

“I know things about you,” Bucky protests, “your favourite colour is pink and if you never have to eat potatoes again you’d cry tears of joy because you hate them.”

Tony snickers, “you like pink? And who doesn’t like potatoes, I might have to kick you out of that,” he says.

Steve rolls his eyes, “when I was kid pink was considered a masculine colour, and I also ate an unfortunate amount of potatoes as a teen so now I can’t stand them,” he says.

“But there are so many forms of potatoes!” Tony says.

“And they all taste like shit,” Steve says, wrinkling his nose.

“I have never been so offended in my entire life. First of all how dare you,” Tony says, offended on behalf of potatoes everywhere.

“Oh my god Tony, potatoes aren’t even sentient, why do you care?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

“I care because _someone_ has to defend the innocent potatoes!” he says dramatically, regretting his decision to trap his arms. This was worthy of some dramatic hand gestures and now he was stuck looking like a blanket cocoon with a head.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining about my taste, Bucky eats literal garbage,” he says.

“That was one time,” Bucky mumbles from behind him, “and it wasn’t like it was a foreign garbage, it was full of things I know and love,” he says.

Tony looks over his shoulder at Bucky, “honey no, that’s not right. Garbage food isn’t okay to eat ever, foreign or no.”

“I can’t believe I have to explain to grown adults that eating out of the garbage and drinking away your problems are things that are not okay to do,” Steve says, sighing.

“I was not drinking my problems away,” Tony says, “I knew full well my problems weren’t going anywhere, I just wanted to be numb for a little while. So more like I wanted to avoid my problems, not actually run from them,” he rationalizes.

“Garbage food is much less messed up than that,” Bucky says mumbles into the mattress.

“Is not,” Tony says, “I have standards, you don’t even have taste buds.”

“For god sakes, neither one of you are completely healthy,” Steve says, “now that we have established that Howard was an awful parent, Tony has some misplaced jealousy, and literally no one here is without some sort of mental health issue can we actually talk about it so we can move past it?” he asks.

“No,” Tony and Bucky mumble together.

*

Tony had expected Howard to give up after his office visit went horribly wrong but once again he under estimated him. He gets calls from unknown number all the time, usually from journalists or groupies, it depended. He answered, fully prepared to tell whomever it was to fuck off but Howard caught him off guard. “Selene wiped Grant’s memory of you. I think maybe she’s tried to take back my memories too but it isn’t working?” he blurts out.

“How did you get my number?” he asks, uninterested in Howard’s plight.

“I… that’s what you care about right now?” he asks, obviously surprised.

“Look, not that I usually agree with taking people’s memories away without their express permission but in this case I’m willing to make an exception, it wasn’t like I was all that nice to Grant and I probably permanently altered the way he looked at you both as a person and a parent. It’s probably a good thing that he doesn’t remember,” Tony says, Howard was a different person now; he understood that, Grant shouldn’t have to deal with Tony’s Howard baggage too.

“I… no, absolutely not, I don’t care if he knows about the person I used to be, you did nothing but tell the truth, Grant shouldn’t have to be punished for that,” he says, “and besides, are you not at all worried about your siblings? I get you don’t care about me, god knows I deserve it, but Grant and Maria haven’t done anything wrong, shouldn’t you care about them?” he asks.

Tony rolls his eyes, “no? Not to be heartless but a fickle connection of shared genes doesn’t create an everlasting and instant bond with a person and even if it did it’s still not my responsibility to keep them safe, it’s yours and Selene’s. Clearly Selene isn’t up for the job so it’s your responsibility now, not mine, like what the hell do you expect me to do?” he asks logically. Howard always did expect him to have a solution to everything. Frankly didn’t see a way to help anyways, it wasn’t as if Selene was an idiot, she’d figure out if he housed them in the tower, and she was smart enough to track them down elsewhere. There goes any help he could offer.

“I don’t know, you were the first person I thought of,” he says and Tony hears something metal hit the ground behind him and he turns around.

“Well Howard I hate to break it to you but you’re not the only one who thought of me first,” he says, watching Selene advance on him with purpose. JARVIS had better be able to find out how she got in so he can fix it, people couldn’t just walk in here, they might walk in on lab sex.

“What’s that supposed to… oh, Tony you need to get out of there-” he probably continued to talk but Selene totally snatched his phone and hung up on him.

“Rude,” Tony says flippantly.

Selene rolls her eyes and throw his phone on his desk, which, excuse her, that was a very expensive piece of tech, it was custom made! He did not want to make himself another one. “I knew I shouldn’t have let him come back here, of course you had to ruin it all,” she snaps, clearly pissed at him.

He snorts, “oh yeah, I brought Howard back to live, probably via murdering someone else, and in the process I stole all his memories and moved him out of state with the intent on never letting him know about the life he left behind. Wow! I have no memory of this, pun intended,” he says. If she wanted to get bitchy with him he’d dish it as good as he got it. Probably better, he always did excel in being an asshole.

“Oh please, if there was anything Howard was right about it was that you weren’t worth his time. We’ve been here for a week and you’ve managed to ruin everything,” she snaps at him.

Maybe he would have believed that a few months ago but he didn’t really believe that now, “no, if there was anything Howard was wrong about it was that I wasn’t worth anything. Howard Stark was a brilliant man and a talented inventor, not many people would be able to do the job he did at Stark Industries and not only did I do just fine, but I excelled and made breakthroughs in areas he wouldn’t have even considered. I am so much more than he ever even thought I could be,” mostly because Howard had thought of him only as a failure, “and if your evil plan fell apart it isn’t because I had the audacity to exist, it’s because you did something wrong and Howard found out the truth. You were the one who made all this possible by fucking with nature; I had nothing to do with it. Now do me a favour, if you’re going to try and humiliate me by insinuating that I deserved to be abused as a child I suggest you cut to the fucking chase and wipe my memory,” he snaps, throwing his hands up, he was so sick of being stuck in Howard’s fucking shadow. He was more than what his father had tried to make him.

“Oh please, you’ve always been a selfish little prick, always partying and never really caring about anything,” she snaps, taking another step forward.

“Oh sure, because I did my damnedest to be numb to all the shit I had to deal with both as a kid and as an adult _I’m_ the problem, I’m a selfish guy yeah, but not because I drink too much. Do you even know anything about me or do you just read tabloids? Because I can inform you I am more than the five things people like to write about me,” he says, rolling his eyes. He fucking hated clueless people who took the word of media as truth, half the time there wasn’t even a shred of truth in there.

“I don’t need the fucking tabloids, I’ve seen all of Howard’s memories, I know everything about you-” she starts but Tony cuts her off.

“Oh my god, you trust _Howard’s_ memories of me to be true? They guy thought it was okay to abuse his child and you’re honestly going to assume anything he thought about me was right? What the hell kind of idiot are you? Literally what encouraged you to think _Howard Stark_ was a reliable source of information on me?” He shakes his head; he couldn’t believe this was actually happening right now. He’s had some ridiculous shit happen to him in the past but this had to take the fucking cake.

“Oh fuck it,” she snaps and shoves him back into his desk.  He kind of regretted the roll-y chair now, that woman was strong and apparently his wheels were well greased. He flails, catching himself against the edge of his desk before he went through it, barely managing to save one of his monitors from falling overboard. “It might be easier to wipe someone’s memory when they’re feeling vulnerable but I don’t have time for this, you need to go,” she says, quickly closing the distance between them.

“Are you going to tell me your evil plan first? If this was a book or a movie you’d have to explain your evil plan,” he says causally.

“Shut up,” she says, “you aren’t an idiot, you know damn well I’m taking your memories so I can get my life back, I’ll deal with Howard later,” she mumbles.

“Yeah, you probably can’t erase his memory because,” she wraps her hand around his neck and squeezes, “excuse you,” he squeaks out, “rude.”

The hand not currently strangling the life out of him starts to glow and he rolls his eyes, glowing hands were just needlessly dramatic. “You’re brave, I’ll give you that, most people start crying right about now,” she says and she starts brining her hand closer but rather slowly. He squints at it, why not just hurry it up and get it over with? Like did she need a second to power up? What was going on?

He gets a little nervous when her hand is only a few inches or so away from his head but he doesn’t flinch, he was kind of curious as to how the was going to go even I he wouldn’t actually remember it. “No!” Tony hears and Bucky appears, seemingly out of nowhere, and grabs Selene’s glowing hand and sticking it to his own head. Tony takes a shuddering breath and Selene starts to scream. Bucky looks blank, emotionless, and Tony springs to action, flinging himself out of his chair and knocking Selene over and away from Bucky.

He takes another few breaths in an attempt to recover himself so he could check on Bucky. God, hadn’t that poor bastard been through enough, did he really need this too? “Are you okay?” Bucky asks, kneeling beside him.

Tony frowns, “you remember who I am?” he asks.

Bucky looks confused, “is there a reason why I shouldn’t?” he asks

“Selene,” Tony gestures to the whimpering woman behind him, “she was going to take my memories, I’m assuming she took some of yours,” he says. If Bucky’s face was anything to go by her power always worked in tandem with her healing because Bucky looked younger, not by much, but he looked less tired and less traumatized.

“I don’t feel any different,” Bucky says, “I don’t think it worked.”

Tony shakes his head, “yes it did, but your memories are so jumbled and confused I think she took some of your memories of HYDRA, maybe not even ones you actually remembered. It would explain that,” he says, gesturing to Selene curled up on the ground with wide eyes, shaking.

“How come I haven’t reacted like that to my own memories?” he asks.

“You lived them, memory is less harsh than living the reality as it happened, Selene didn’t get that experience and now she’s paying dearly for it,” he says.

“What do we do with her?” Bucky asks. Tony grins; he had the best idea ever.

*

Coulson frowns when he’s told he has a package from Tony Stark but he signs off on it and goes to get it. S.H.I.E.L.D agents have already surrounded it and started guessing what it was, they ranged from a box full of literal shit to a dead Bucky Barnes. Coulson was certain Stark would not send any of those things but he was curious nonetheless, especially when he noticed the air holes in the side of the box.

He opens the box to find a woman in the bottom, curled up in a nest of blankets put in there with the intent on keeping her warm and somewhat comfortable with a bow on her head and a note pinned to her jacket. Coulson pulls the letter off her jacket gently and reads the sticky note.

_She’s got some sort of healing/ fountain of youth superpower. She took some on Barnes’ memories and now she’s all traumatized, have fun!_

He rolls his eyes and reads the letter, raising an eyebrow at the tale Stark tells. He finishes the letter and looks back down to Selene, “alright, someone register her on the Gifted list and put her in a cell until we can figure out what to do with her,” he says and people jump to action.

“Stark seriously mailed you a person?” Melinda asks.

“Yes and no, technically he had her hand delivered to avoid her being tossed around though the mail system but essentially yes, he mailed me a person. You should read this,” he says, handing Melinda the letter. They had some research to do.      


	11. Chapter 11

Tony seemed to sleep better if Steve was around; whenever he went on business trips he always seemed to get the least amount of sleep possible for him to function correctly. That wasn’t actually very much either, only a few hours every few days because he was so used to not sleeping well. Thankfully the drama of the last few days had exhausted him and he had fallen asleep fairly early that night around eleven. He never did sleep the whole night though; he woke up at least twice no matter how short of a time he was asleep, so he wasn’t particularly surprised when he woke up sometime in the middle of the night. He was, however, rather surprised to find Bucky wedged between him and Steve, his face pressed to his arc reactor. Tony had no idea how Bucky could sleep with that light in his eyes, half the time the light from the thing kept him awake at night and he wasn’t pressed against it.

Steve was pressed tightly to Bucky’s back, his arm thrown over the two of them, his fingers just brushing Tony’s hip. It was cute even if he was confused with Bucky’s presence in his bed, “if someone told me a year ago that I’d have two ninety five year olds in my bed and I’d be happy about it I would have laughed in their face,” he mumbles, shaking his head. Steve twitches, disturbed by Tony’s noise, he was a ridiculously light sleeper, and Bucky snickers.

“If someone told me about you and Steve last year I probably would have killed you both,” he says.

Tony frowns and looks down at Bucky, who grins sleepily at him, “that’s fucking morbid, Barnes,” he says. Steve twitches again and Bucky wiggles around, adjusting his position so he’s more comfortable.

“Stop moving, Tony,” he mumbles and jabs Bucky in the side. Bucky frowns at Steve but complies and stops wiggling around; Tony falls asleep again not long after that.

When he wakes up again he’s somehow ended up spread over Bucky and Steve, limbs cast in all directions. He had no idea how anyone managed to sleep with him, he either didn’t move at all or he was all over the place. “Tony,” Steve whispers, gently shaking his shoulder. Tony groans and curls himself into a ball, leaving most of him on Steve, and he adjusts himself so he and Steve are sharing a pillow. “Tony,” Steve whispers again.

“Shh,” Tony scolds and curls into a tighter position.

Steve then decides it’s a good idea to head butt him, “ow! What the hell” he stage whispers, awake immediately.

“You should have woken up the first time,” Steve whispers back, “besides, it wasn’t like it was that rough, you hit your head on the wall harder than that all the time.”

“So?” he hisses, rubbing his sore skull.

“Whatever. What is Bucky doing in here?” he asks, gesturing to the offending person, who was now face down in Tony’s pillow snoring lightly.

“The fuck if I know, does it matter?” he asks, eyeing his pillow and wondering if he could snatch it back without Bucky trying to snuff him out.

“Does it?” Steve asks. Tony senses that there is a deeper meaning there but he wanted sleep, not serious conversation.

“No,” he says and snatches the pillow from under Bucky’s head, only managing to half pull it from under him before Bucky watches his wrist and glares at him, sleepy but mostly alert.

“That’s my pillow you bed hogging fuck, give it back!” Tony stage whispers at Bucky, who drops his wrist and let’s Tony go. He rolls off of Steve and sticks the pillow under his head, fully prepared to fall asleep when the pillow is snatched back.

“It’s mine now,” Bucky whispers, dropping back into his previous position.

“Oh my god, this is going to kill me,” Steve whispers.

*

Tony wakes up early, a product of going to sleep so early, and decides he should probably do actual work before Pepper starts showing up and shooing him to the lab to do things. He got bored of that fast though and instead decided to fix a few problems on the gauntlet of the suit, it had been awhile since he worked on it anyways. His phone rings and he finds it buried under a pile of papers, “Stark,” he says, not really paying attention to whoever was on the other side. He had better things to do, and it was probably Pepper anyways.

“Sweet, this is actually your number!” a feminine voice that definitely was not Pepper says.

He sighs and prepares to tell the probably fan that he wasn’t interested in having a conversation with some random person about himself. Maybe next week. Instead the person on the other end continues, “okay so I am really fucking confused, like apparently I’m your sibling but that isn’t scientifically possible?” she says, her voice going up at the end like her statement was more of a question than a statement.

“Oh, you must be Maria. Ok, so let me explain some stuff and  I hope you’re at least kind of science smart otherwise you’re going to get lost…” he says and proceeds to explain, in his opinion, what the hell was going on. She was not a patient person, she interrupted every three seconds with questions he hadn’t gotten to answer yet, and barely let him get into any sort of in depth description before she had some theory on why his theory wasn’t right. It occurred to him that this must be what having a conversation with himself must be like and he decided that this needed to be immediately rectified because he was fucking annoying, no wonder he had no friends.

“Oh my god child, if no one likes you I can assure you it’s because you are the most irritating thing on this planet,” he tells her, “and I’ve met myself, when your more annoying than me it’s not only accomplishment, it’s kind of sad,” he says sympathetically.

“Oh my god, I am not more annoying than you, you are like as irritating as it gets,” she says, apparently not the least bit offended at being labelled annoying, “seriously, you manage to land on literally every tabloid magazine at least once a week. You have so many scandals happening around you that even the most dedicated reporters can’t keep up. I just ask questions, ergo, you’re more annoying,” she says.

“Oh that doesn’t count; you can’t claim I’m more annoying just because I’m famous and you aren’t, that doesn’t make any sense. I’m sure you know at least three people that aren’t famous but are extremely annoying,” he says, “just because I’m famous doesn’t mean I’m automatically more annoying than the general public.”

“Does too, now everyone has to deal with your shit,” she says.

“Well I’m dating Captain America so suck it,” he tells her. He totally doesn’t expect her to burst out laughing and call him delusional. He gives the phone an offended look, not caring that Maria couldn’t actually see it, “excuse you! I am not delusional, and considering you mother has weird healing powers and brought my asshat dad back from the dead I think you should rethink your position here,” he says.

“If Captain America was even alive there would have been like _so_ many reports of that,” she says and okay, so her logic was pretty sound but she was wrong.

“Yeah, except S.H.I.E.L.D totally hid the guy from the public eye and no one is going to think the blonde guy that looks exactly like Steve Rogers actually is Steve Rogers, that’s just dumb,” he says.

“ _Wow_ , read a history text book guy, S.H.I.E.L.D was dismantled after World War Two after the threat of HYDRA passed. You’re story doesn’t even add up,” she says triumphantly.

Tony snorts, “S.H.I.E.L.D is a super-secret government agency that was never supposed to see the light of day but then Steve went and rescued Bucky and, well, the rest is literally history. After World War Two S.H.I.E.L.D went underground but, unfortunately, so did HYDRA and both are still in operation,” he says, “the Capsicle was found roughly ten months ago, Bucky shortly after.”

“Umm, if you know all this shouldn’t you like… not tell anyone?” she says, confused.

“Tell everyone you want, no one will believe you,” he says, “and S.H.I.E.L.D will probably kill you, they aren’t as heroic as the history text books make them out to be. So is there a reason for this call or are you just calling to annoy me?” he asks.

“Wow, okay, I’d rather not die because you’re loose lipped. And excuse you, I can’t just want to talk to my brother?” she asks.

“I was under the impression you and Grant didn’t get along,” he says, “also what does that have to do with me?”

“Okay ouch, that hurt, you would also technically qualify as my brother. So I’ve kind of always wanted to wrap myself up on and drop myself off on a billionaire’s door step and you, my friend, are going to make that happen,” she tells him. He entertains her ideas without much intent on following through but when he tells Steve and gets some judgemental looks he relents and decides he’d give Howard a chance, _one_ chance, to not fuck it up. And only because he was genuinely curious about his half siblings and Steve had gotten that patriotic look that meant he was going to lecture Tony.

*

“Wow, you guys live here? I’m pretty sure the only thing I could fit into a house this small is my shoes, maybe some suits,” he says, looking around the small space. It floored him that people actually lived in places this tiny, he would have no clue how to function.

Howard and Grant were giving him skeptical looks but Maria groans, “I _know_ , like I’ve had to suffer with this my whole life. I could have been a billionaire, but no, mom had to keep you secret and shit,” she says, rolling her eyes. Tony suspected that this was a front to hide how she was actually feeling, he did this kind of thing all the time, but he didn’t say anything. Howard seems to recognize this too and lets it go.

“Does this mean we’re moving? Because I already hate this school, I don’t really want to move and go to some other school and get bullied for being new _and_ weird,” he says, looking upset.

“You get bullied? Yeah, I remember how that is,” he says, remembering his first year at MIT. That was awful, he was three times as good as everyone else in there and no one took him seriously. He kind of wondered if that was what it was like to be a woman, except all the time but he kept forgetting to ask Pep.

Grant snorts, “as if you got bullied, you’re Tony Stark,” he says bitterly.

“Kid, I was in university with kids that were at least three years older than me on average and I was way better at everything than them. It pissed them off that I was so much younger and so much more successful and believe me, I paid dearly for that. Joke’s on them though, when we have a reunion I get to rub the fact that I’m way more successful than all of them combined in their faces,” he says, grinning. He’d already ran into a few people he knew in his undergrad degree and he had happily let them know how much more successful he was than them. Hell, a couple people who went to school with him now worked for him. Those had been some really fucking fun job interviews, at least for him. He bet they all regretted being an asshole to him now.

Grant looks surprised, “really?” he asks. Poor kid, Tony thought, this was clearly the first time he had any hope in the ‘it gets better’ shit, not that Tony blamed him. He hadn’t thought it would get any better either, and for a lot of people it didn’t. He was lucky, minus the kidnapped-by-terrorists-and-fucked-over-by-business-partner’ thing. Everyone had their bad days he guessed; it just happened he had four months’ worth of those all at once.

“Yeah, kid. You have no clue how fun it is to see some asshole that used to try and regularly fuck up all your projects apply for a job at your company and sit there squirming while you outline every shitty thing he ever did to you. Then you top it off with a ‘why the fuck should I hire you?’ cherry on top and sit back as they sputter uselessly. Seriously, best thing _ever_ ,” he says.

“Did you hire any of them?” Grant asks, looking amused.

“Well yeah, I can’t actually not hire people because they used to beat me up. But every time they see me they know that I could have turned them down because they were assholes and they feel like shit, I can see it. Then they feel like they owe me and they do great work out of fear of being fired,” he says. It was even better when he personally collaborated with them. They sure as hell took him seriously then, and they didn’t purposely fuck with his tech. Guess the tables turning and having him be their boss teaches them a lesson.

Grant grins, “Seriously? That’s awesome,” he says.

Howard looks horrified, “no, that is not awesome you shouldn’t blatantly abuse your power over people,” he says, looking between Tony and Grant.

Tony doesn’t mean to but he starts laughing, probably harder than the situation warranted, “wow, coming from you! That’s… that’s rich really, and these people abused their power over me, I’m not apologizing for doing the same, you were the one who taught me that. Besides, I hired them, and I wouldn’t fire them without just cause, I might be an asshole but I’m not _that_ much of an asshole,” he says. He knew most of those people had families and even if they didn’t they didn’t deserve to get skipped over for a good job opportunity just because he was feeling petty. He’s debated on it though, but he only followed through on it once with a particularly rude asshole and he still referred him to Hammer Industries, but only because he wanted to see that asshole suffer excessively.

“Just because I was a shitty person and gave you bad advice doesn’t mean you should give that advice to Grant,” he says and Tony knows he’s trying to be reasonable but fuck him; he didn’t get to play the good dad now. It was too little too late for that bullshit.

“Please, my little speech gave him more hope than a lifetime’s worth of whatever you’ve been saying to him. Guess fatherhood was never meant to be your thing,” he says casually. Howard’s jaw clenches and his eyes narrow, both were usually followed by him yelling obscenities at Tony but he didn’t expect that now. In this life Howard was a lot calmer but Tony had still succeeded in pissing him off and that was what mattered. It was petty to feel triumphant but it was about fucking time he won a victory over Howard and he wanted to rub Howard’s fucking face in it.

“When I decided it was a good idea to try and play house I didn’t expect quite so many daddy issues,” Maria says, cutting through the silence

*

Howard had been surprisingly gracious, only looking mildly pissed off every time Tony made some dig at him. Steve, however, was not gracious at all and tried to get him to apologize, which resulted in a yelling match, which resulted in poor Grant crying and Maria attempting to film it. “What?” she had said to Howard when he snatched her phone, “Captain America is yelling at my half-brother about his dead not dead dad, this needs to be immortalized on film,” she said. Howard had sent her off to go find Grant and made a noble attempt at trying to defuse the situation, which had only resulted in Tony yelling at him and Steve yelling at Tony more.

Eventually Bucky had had enough and slammed his metal fist on the marble counter top, cracking it, and told them to shut up. The poor guy looked freaked out but Tony has always been insensitive so he told Bucky to choke on Steve’s star spangled dick. Howard had inexplicably started laughing at that and some of the tension was defused. Tony, annoyed with this, decides to fuck off and get some air before he punches Steve’s face and hurts himself. Steve probably wouldn’t even feel it, the guy was practically a marble statue, Tony had learned this from flailing around in nightmares only to wake himself up by accidentally hitting Steve and hurting his fist. Steve usually made irritated noises at him and fell back asleep.

He finds Grant sitting on the outdoor furniture and sighs, “sorry for making you cry,” he says because Grant didn’t deserve to suffer for his issues.

Grant shrugs, “its fine, it was stupid,” he mumbles.

Tony shakes his head, “no it wasn’t, there’s nothing wrong with being upset in stressful situations. Besides, take it from someone who knows, doing your damnedest to not feel anything at all only leads to you feeling a shit ton of emotions with no idea how to identify them. That leads to a whole new world of problems, let yourself feel, deal with it to the best of your ability, and move on the best you can,” he says. He wished he had that advice as a kid, now as an adult he had no idea what was going on half the time and made jokes and refused to take anything seriously in an attempt to distance himself from any situation that might result in him getting hurt.

Grant snorts, “most people tell me to ‘man up’,” he says.

Tony rolls his eyes, “when people say man up people think they’re telling you that you should be emotionless and calm and the epitome of logic, but what they’re really saying is that you’re only allowed to feel anger, to yell, and to be violent. Anger and yelling, contrary to the beliefs of the guys who scream at each other on Fox news, doesn’t really solve anything. Frankly if you’re angry all the time you end up an emotionally stunted asshole with daddy issues,” he says.

Grant smiles and ducks his head, “I don’t think you’re that bad. I mean you might have the emotional range of a half melted teaspoon but you’re also dating Captain America so I think you still came out on top there,” he says.

Tony laughs, “If you say so. Anyway, I have a plan for those bullies of yours,” he says and stands up, “you need a makeover because seriously kid, you have an eyebrow, singular, for that alone I can see why you’re the school punching bag. Now let’s go,” he says.

Grant frowns and touches his eyebrow self-consciously, “what’s wrong with my eyebrows?” he asks.

“You mean besides the fact that you only have one? I have a two finger rule about eyebrows, actually I have a two finger rule about a lot of things but most of those things aren’t thirteen year old appropriate, anyways you must always maintain two fingers between your eyebrows or you’re a savage or an artist,” he tell Grant.

“Eww, I did not need to know that!” Maria says, giving away her hiding spot behind a plant, “that’s just wrong!” he says.

“Would you prefer no fingers? Because that shit is not going to go over well,” he says, full well knowing Maria had caught onto the sexual meaning behind his words.

“What are you two talking about?” Grant asks, obviously catching on that he was missing something.

“Nothing you want to know,” Maria says.

“Shut up Maria, I do so wanna know,” he says, sticking his tongue out at her.

“Do you really wanna know?” Tony asks, sensing a good opportunity to scar the kid for life without causing any actual damage.

“Yes,” Grant says.

“Really?” he asks, just so he could tell Grant that he told him so when he was grossed out.

“Yes, what is going on?” he asks, getting annoyed.

Tony grins, “ever considered sticking a couple of fingers up someone’s ass?” he asks.

The look on Grant’s face was priceless, “oh my god no! Why would you do that!” he yells, looking positively horrified.

When Tony and Maria finally recover from laughing a good ten minutes later he takes a deep breath, “tell Howard to give you the sex talk,” he says.

Grant shakes his head, “no thank you,” he says. This starts a whole new round of laughter, at this point Tony was going to get abs.                     


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left!

Tony invited Rhodey out along with him and Grant but didn’t tell him what was going on until he was already there that way he couldn’t back out. Rhodey had been some unimpressed about the shopping trip because he loathed Tony stuffing him into clothes he thought would look good and having to deal with Tony buying it all. Rhodey never had been very good at accepting Tony’s help with anything, at least not financially, not that Tony didn’t do it anyways because he totally did. Rhodey was, however, glad that Grant was today’s focus and the two had fun making the kid suffer. Grant was irritated after about five minutes in the first store and steadily grew grouchier throughout the day.

To be fair he had a lot of patience and only made a few snappy comments that Tony chose to ignore in favour of taking pleasure in torturing Grant. Rhodey, it seemed, thoroughly enjoyed shopping trips when he wasn’t the lost cause Tony was trying to fix. By the time they got back to the Tower Grant was freely speaking his mind, which Tony got the impression was an odd occurrence, so he decided that was a good sign. “Finally you’ve grown a little back bone,” he says after Grant insults his taste in shoes and Grant glares at him. Rhodey decides to attempt cheering the kid up with all the stories he had of Tony dragging him around, which only served to irritate Grant more.

“So how was the shopping trip?” Maria asks when they get back, Grant answers by giving her the dirtiest look Tony has ever seen on a thirteen year olds face. “You look less like a Star Wars alien!” she yells after him after he takes off to the room he was currently staying in. He was fairly certain Grant told her to fuck off but his assessment was mostly based off Steve’s shocked expression. Howard had left the room, on the phone, having fled when he saw Tony. That was nice, Tony thought; of course Howard would run off as soon as he could. God forbid he spend three seconds in the same room as him, that would just be too damn difficult now wouldn’t it?

Tony ended up unintentionally spending the rest of the night with Maria, arguing about who was better, Charmander of Squirtle, when Bucky tried to end the argument by suggesting Gastly was the best and then Steve went with fucking Jigglypuff. “Oh my god, your dating that loser?” Maria asks, looking horrified.

“Not for long,” Tony protests, “Jigglypuff?” he asks, “really?”

“Beedrill,” Grant says, making a not-so-grand reappearance.

“What?” they all ask in sync.

“Beedrill is the best, literally no one is going to look at you and think to themselves ‘yeah, see that guy with the bee almost as big as him? Let’s go mess with _that_ guy’. Like it wouldn’t even matter how nice the Beedrill is, that thing looks like a hater and people would recognize that,” he says.

“Beedrill looks like a hater?” Steve asks, “and Jigglypuff is cute!” he says in a lame attempt to defend himself.

Bucky looks confused, “Gastly is a ghost. I want a ghost, therefore Gastly wins,” he says.

“Okay but Squirtle-” Maria starts but Tony cuts her off.

“Squirtle is what you save a guy’s number in your phone as if he cums in two seconds or less, Gastly sounds like a description of a dying grandmother, Jigglypuff is what Rhodey named his fat hamster, and although I can’t argue against Grant’s Beedrill argument I can assure you I’d light that thing on fire with my awesome Charmander,” he says, “I obviously win.”

“Just because you make weird associations with names doesn’t mean you win, Tony,” Steve says, looking hilariously upset at being dismissed.

“No he’s right, your favourite Pokémon can’t be what a ten year old named his hamster,” Bucky says.

“Actually Rhodey currently has Jigglypuff the fat hamster, he got it last year,” Tony says and Rhodey sighs from the couch.

“You couldn’t just leave me out of it, could you Stark?” he says, looking unimpressed with being dragged into Tony’s debate.

“You know what, Rhodey named his fat hamster Jigglypuff so he obviously agrees with me,” Steve says.

“Guys, my Beedrill argument is solid, no one will mess with the giant bee,” Grant says, raising one eyebrow and only one because now he had two thanks to Tony.

“I actually think Jigglypuff is stupid, that’s why I named my hamster after it, I like Geodude,” Rhodey says, looking apologetic for having to disagree with Captain America.

“Maria, shut your mouth, you are all wrong, the psychic Pokémon are obviously the best and most useful because the fucking things are psychic,” Howard says, “also Grant’s Beedrill argument is solid, no one will fuck with the giant bee. Now go do something else so I don’t have to listen to you all bicker about useless shit,” Howard makes a shooing motion at them, which, absolutely not, this was Tony’s house thank you very much. He will not be shooed.

“Geodude sucks,” Maria mumbles.

“Oh my god I know!” Tony says back, “it’s a rock with arms, that’s just dumb!”

“You know what, you like Charmander, and that is-”

“Stop arguing about Pokémon,” Howard hisses, rubbing his temples.

“Shove your psychic Pokémon up your ass,” Tony snaps.

*

“Oh my god, I can’t believe that worked, people are so shallow,” Maria says, rolling her eyes. Obviously it worked; it was Tony’s idea, his ideas always worked. Well, mostly, he’s had a flop or two but Grant wasn’t one of them.

“See, that’s what two eyebrows get you,” Tony says, wiggling his own eyebrows.

“People don’t care about my eyebrows, people care that I’m wearing expensive clothes,” Grant mumbles, upset that Tony had been proven right.

“No, people care about your eyebrows, I heard all about your eyebrows all week. I, for one,  am deeply offended because I have always had great eyebrows and no one gives me any credit but Grant finds his and he’s the talk of the town,” Maria sighs, making faces at Grant, who was now well dressed.

“I liked all my old clothes and my unibrow,” he mumbles, crossing his arms.

“Well, the good news is you can grow your unibrow back and go back to wearing your questionable wardrobe and no one will know the difference because you guys are moving to New York,” Tony says, and Grant wrinkles his nose, “aww, you guys didn’t know. Well now you do!” he says cheerily and flees before Howard finds him and gives him those surprisingly guilt inducing looks for accidentally telling his kind of siblings that they were moving out of state.

“I think this is great!” Maria yells after him. That made half of them, Grant, from what Tony understood, was not fond of the large crowds.

He goes outside and finds Steve and Bucky hovering over Steve’s phone looking confused and disturbed, “I told you,” Steve says, “you can look up literally anything plus porn and there is a pornographic version of it.” Tony quickly ducks behind a plant because this was bound to be pure gold and he wasn’t going to ruin it by interrupting.

“Why would someone make porn from little yellow pill things?” Bucky asks, frowning.

“They’re called minions, I don’t really understand them and Tony says Facebook needs to stop but I don’t get the connection between the two,” he says, shrugging.

“Then why don’t you look up Facebook and minions to see what he’s talking about?” Bucky asks.

Steve looks pinched, “I looked up Captain America on Facebook once and got so much crap about anti-immigrant propaganda, and all this other crazy neo-Nazi stuff. It’s like people don’t realize that racism, anti-Semitism, and Nazis were the problem in World War Two and now think that immigrants, for whatever reason, have less of a right to be in America? I don’t know, but I decided Facebook was a lost cause after that,” Steve says, rolling his eyes. Tony smiles, Steve was such a sweetie, it was a shame people associated him with awful things.

“Do they know?” Bucky asks.

“Know what?” Steve frowns, eyebrows drawing together.

“That you and your mom are Irish immigrants that is kind of important if they’re going to use you as anti-immigrant propaganda. Also are they aware that America is built on immigration? Well, genocide and slavery, but white people aren’t native to this section of the world,” Bucky says, looking confused.

Steve sighs, “Apparently not, you’d think something like this would have stayed in the forties, its unbelievable how little some things have changed,” he says, shaking his head. Tony frowns, well that went from hilarious to fucking depressing super-fast.

Time to make an appearance, he decided, “hey guys,” he says and steps out from behind the plant.

Steve and Bucky look up and smile, or kind of move his lips upward in Bucky’s case, he was still working on the human emotions thing. “Hey,” Steve says, “have you seen Howard around? Don’t give me that sour face, he’s not as horrible as you think.” Tony was really tempted to turn around and walk away but Steve would either follow or corner him later.

“Yeah, that’s easy for you to say, you didn’t have the shit childhood with him for a father,” he says, harsher than intended. But it was true, whoever Steve knew wasn’t the same man Tony did, Steve would have never considered Howard-the-child-abuser a friend. He knew him well enough to know that Steve would never _ever_ condone that behaviour for any reason.

“Neither did you siblings,” Steve points out, “whoever you knew doesn’t exist anymore,” he says logically.

Tony clenches his jaw, he knew Steve was right, he did, but why should that mean he had to forgive Howard? Not being the same person didn’t erase the wrongs he did and it certainly didn’t mean he was somehow deserving of forgiveness. “No offence Steve, but I don’t see how that does anything for me, I mean great that Grant and Maria had a decent father but I didn’t. Being a relatively good person now doesn’t mean he gets forgiven for what he did then, and frankly being a decent human being doesn’t give a person brownie points,” he snaps.

“Maybe not, but don’t you think that at the very least you should forgive him for you? It can’t be healthy to carry all that anger around,” he says softly, reaching out to Tony but he steps away.

“No, I don’t need to forgive him for me, for him, or for anyone else. I am happy and healthy all on my own and it didn’t require forgiving my father, it, apparently, required making a human connection to someone other than Rhodey and Pepper,” he says. That was only partially true; his theory on his own happiness was that, for the first time in his life, he felt loved. It was for selfish reasons he knew, Steve’s life revolved completely around him for the most part, and he liked that. But if Steve gained a new hobby or something he probably wouldn’t feel like he was unimportant either, not like he did with Rhodey and Pepper, at least before Steve. Bucky proved that, he had only been minor threatened at first and now he didn’t care how much time the two spent together, he knew that both of them still cared. Something in the last few months had changed that had prompted the realization that love for one thing didn’t cancel out love for another, and he felt more secure than he ever had and that had nothing to do with Howard or forgiveness. His life did not revolve around Howard Stark and forgiveness was not necessary, nor was it an option.

“Tony,” Steve starts but he waves him off.

“I don’t need to forgive Howard, and it won’t take anything away from me if I don’t. I am not less of a person because I hate his guts, and fuck you for suggesting that.” He walks away before he says something he’ll regret later, headed towards the lab. Howard had a few things right when he was alive, and working to drown out the problems of your everyday life was always a viable solution. And it didn’t end with Pepper dragging him out of a bar by his ear or throwing up on Bucky.

*

Tony was fixing Dummy, the dumb bot broke down again, and he was threatening to strip him for parts though they both knew they were empty threats. He may get irritated with the bots and insult them on a semi regular basis but he loved them all the same, JARVIS was still his favourite though. The bots were just projects he was fucking around with, JARVIS was practically his baby. Howard had made an appearance some twenty minutes before but Tony purposefully ignored him in the hopes he would go away. Instead the fuck started tinkering with his things, ohhing and ahhing when he found something new and interesting to play with. He kind of wanted to kick Howard out of the lab but that defeated the purpose of ignoring him.

Finally Howard gets annoyed with being ignored and Tony figures he’ll leave but no, instead he comes over and settles in front of Tony. “You have every right to be mad at me-” he starts.

“Fucking right I do, get out,” he snaps back, cutting Howard off.

Howard laughs softly and Tony glares at him, “you never were very fond of silence, I’m surprised you held it in this long” he says and Tony raises an eyebrow, “if that’s your way of asking if I remember you than the answer is yes,” he says and looks away.

Tony waits patiently for him to continue, curious as to what he had to say for himself but unwilling to help him out of the situation. “I… I remember every awful thing I ever said or did to you. No wonder you hate me,” he says quietly. Tony remains silent because there wasn’t much to say to him, he wasn’t going to forgive him, and he wasn’t going to feel sorry for him either. They both had to live with his actions but Tony got the shittier end of that stick. “I used to think that by being so hard on you I was preparing you for the real world, the media is mean and I had this ridiculous notion that if you were used to it it wouldn’t bother you later. I guess I was half right, except I also taught you that being close to people gets you hurt, and because of that you alienate everyone around you in an attempt to save yourself the same pain I caused you, I am so sorry,” he says.

He sounded sincere and Tony fucking hated him for that. He didn’t want sincere, he wanted a fucking villain, and he knew damn well he wasn’t going to get one. It was easier to hate the man Howard used to be, not so much the person he was. “You ruined my life,” he says, glaring hard at Howard.

Howard shakes his head, “no Tony, I ruined your childhood, you made your life great. You have been to hell and back, you more than filled my position in the company, you basically scrapped my original business plan and completely remade the company in a much better image, and you’ve revolutionized several industries. Your life isn’t ruined because of me, don’t let my shitty parenting overshadow your success, I assure you I am not worth that much and I never have been.”

Tony doesn’t know what to say to that. “My whole life he wanted to hear that or some variation of that and now that I have it… it fell flat. I know that you genuinely mean that, but that didn’t come from the guy who thought it was appropriate to tell his thirteen year old son that he would never live up to the legacy he set, it came from the guy who told his child that his unibrow was perfectly fine if he liked it. It get that you, Howard Stone, are sorry, but Howard Stark? Howard Stark? The only thing he was ever sorry for was having me as a child,” he spits, pulling himself to his feet, leaving Dummy half finished.

“That isn’t true,” Howard calls after him and Tony stops, half turning so Howard knew he had his attention, “I was always proud of you, I just didn’t know how to show it. I still don’t truth be told, you’re so closed off I have no idea how Steve and Bucky made it past your defences.”

Tony turns to walk away and turns back, “they were vulnerable when we met, the three of us. Both of them were so much more fucked up than me; I guess I felt like neither of them would judge my past because they had one too. Besides, it was kind of nice having someone other than Rhodey to talk to, made me feel like less of a burden on the poor guy,” he says and with that he leaves.

*

Steve shuffles his papers around on the bed, “I’m sorry about earlier. Sometimes I forget what it’s like to be really angry with someone, so angry you’ll never forget. You know I love you right?” he says, looking apologetic.

Tony smiles and drops a folder on Steve’s face, “I love you too,” he says, laughing. He wished he knew he’d be here a year ago, even with the Howard drama he was happy, finally content with himself and his place in life.

Bucky appears in the doorway, stripping off his shirt and throwing himself on Tony’s bed, completely ignoring the papers he landed on. “I love you too, but not Steve because he scarred me for life with minion porn,” he says, face half buried in the pillow he landed on.

Steve looks so offended Tony starts laughing again, “that’s what you get for showing him the dark side of the twenty first century, now he’ll love me more for life,” Tony says, grinning.

“Oh my god I will not, you didn’t tell me or Steve about bananas and for that you will never be forgiven. And you also didn’t tell us about bacon wrapped everything, bacon is my love now, you two come second,” Bucky says.

Steve’s face was priceless, “I come second to _bacon_ ,” he asks, looking scandalized.

“Hey, you left me for a guy with a weird light thing in his chest, I think you can suffer with bacon being the new love of my life, and don’t think I don’t know about Peggy either. I remember her, I was kind of scared of her actually, she was a one woman force to be reckoned with. I remember being upset that she was the only person I had ever met who would be good enough for you,” he says, propping himself up, smiling slightly.

“Hey!” Tony says, offended.

“What? You’re kind of an ass. A lovable ass though, with a lovable ass. What I’m trying to say is that you make no sense,” he says, eyebrows drawing together.

Steve snickers, “wow, this is so not what I imagined my life would be. I like it though, including Tony the ass with the lovable ass,” he says, grinning.

“Well, at least I know you appreciate the finer things in life, if my ass is not on the list of finer things than I don’t know what it,” he says and pulls a file out from under Bucky.

“Please,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes, “there are better things than your ass. Also I feel obligated to tell you that Coulson called with an update on Selene, apparently she’s this thing called an inhuman? I don’t know, he made no sense,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“Coulson called? What did you say to him?” Tony asks.

“I listened to his update on Selene and told him that if he was an animal he would be a mouse because he is a pest,” he says.

Tony rubs his face, “good lord that is almost a worse insult than those swear words Rhodey made up in fifth grade,” he says, shaking his head.

“Rhodey made up swear words?” Steve asks.

Tony sighs, “unfortunately, ‘pumpkin head’ was at the top of his list as far as usage. To this day he gets offended when you call him that even though no logical human would consider that insulting.” He shakes his head, fifth grade Rhodey was hilarious but he had some weird ways to deal with assholes.


	13. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter my friends!

“Good lord Steve, you’re so white we could use you as a night light because you’d glow in the moon light,” Maria says, snickering. Steve sighs, having grown used to the light jabs Maria and Tony threw his way on a regular basis.

“The shorts weren’t enough?” he asks, gesturing the American flag shorts he was wearing because Tony and Bucky insisted, “every racial minority has fled because a white dude in American flag shorts means that he’s a racist,” Steve says, looking over the beach, upset.

“First of all the racial minorities are missing out on your fiiiine body,” Maria says, wiggling her eyebrows at his abs. Steve, Tony, and Bucky give her horrified looks but she doesn’t seem to notice, “also the American flag shorts were a must, like no one else knows be we do and it’s _hilarious_ ,” she says.

“Tony stop your fetus of a sibling from checking me out, it’s weird,” he says, shrinking in on himself a bit.

Tony smacks Maria in the back of the head, “stop making him uncomfortable you creep,” he says.

“Ugh, I’m just saying his body is a gift to the world, but in the interest of not being a creep I will keep my eyeballs to myself,” she says, walking off in the direction of someone who had caught her interest.

*

“Jesus Christ and I thought Steve was white,” Maria says, poking Grant when he and Howard show up to the beach.

Grant looks annoyed, “I’m not Jesus, but it’s flattering that you think so. Not sure why though, Jesus was definitely not white,” he says.

“Yes!” Rhodey says, giving Grant a thumbs up. Grant grins and flops himself down on the sheet Tony had spread out to sit on, he was not getting sand in his ass crack, it happened once when he decided beach sex was a great idea and he was not having a repeat of that incident.

“Wait, Jesus wasn’t white? What else has the church lied about?!” Maria yells melodramatically.

“You going to heaven,” Grant says without missing a beat. Tony bursts out laughing and high fives him for that excellent insult.

Howard frowns, “Maria, Jesus was from the Middle East, under what circumstances would a Middle Eastern guy be white? He was obviously born there so there is no reason to think he was a white man,” he says.

Maria rolls her eyes, “guys, I’ve never actually paid attention to church stuff, I just like the pretty statues and art and stuff and Jesus was always white. This is not my fault,” she says, placing her hands on her hips. Howard sighs deeply, probably figuring arguing with her isn’t worth it, she was far too much like him and Tony to start something with. It would never end is it started, they were still fighting over the Pokémon and it’s been nearly a year since the argument started. So far all they agreed on was that Rhodey was wrong and Geodude sucked.

They sit in the sun for a while, every once in a while laughing at Steve’s reactions to the book he was reading, some romance novel he obviously wasn’t enjoying. “Why are continuing you read something you clearly don’t like?” Grant finally asks some time later.

“It… it can’t possibly be this bad,” he says, frowning, “Bucky liked it.” Tony catches on immediately and starts laughing; receiving odd looks from Grant and Steve.

“You moron, he’s trolling you,” Tony explains and Grant snorts and laughs, Rhodey shakes his head. Bucky had conveniently taken off a while ago to do whatever it was Bucky did in his spare time, probably to avoid being stared at having a metal arm and such, leaving Steve to suffer with the offending novel

Steve throws the book down, “that fuck owes me hours of my life back for this. I’ve read instruction manuals that were more engaging than that,” he says, upset that Bucky had pranked him. He stares off into the distance for a few minutes and shakes his head, “I’m tracking him down for this and making him explain to why he has done this to me,” he says and picks himself up, walking off to track Bucky down.

“It’s payback for the minion porn,” Tony says, Bucky had been some scarred by that and was upset that Steve would ruin his life like that. A crappy romance novel was the perfect revenge.

Grant whips around, looking disgusted, “the what?” he asks, horrified.

“Google it,” Tony tells him.

“Do _not_ Google it,” Rhodey says, giving Tony a look, apparently keen on not scarring Grant for life.

“Umm, okay then. I need some advice though and I’m hoping it will be better than telling me to Google minion porn,” he says, “so obviously Maria and I started in a new school, and you told me to be cool and aloof, like a cat, and people would want to know me and they do but like no one but the shitty people talk to me. So basically how the hell did your advice have me go from being the loser no one liked to the cool guy that everyone likes but no one actually knows or talks to and how do I go from that to a person with friends. Like that was my goal and you have failed me,” he says, raising his eyebrows, because he totally still had two.

It was Tony’s crowning achievement that year, he told that to Forbes when they interviewed him and they tried to say it was Iron Man or the element he and Howard synthesized a few months ago, it was not, and he made sure everyone knew that. Grant’s eyebrows were now listed as Tony Stark’s greatest achievement that year and that made him happy, everyone else was confused as to why he cared about Grant’s eyebrows. Actually he was pretty sure no one knew who Grant was and that made it all the better. He was so excited to see the headlines wondering who Grant was and why Tony cared about his eyebrows so much. He had a framed tabloid cover framed for Grant as a Christmas gift.

“Well kid, talk to the only people who haven’t bothered to try and get to know you, then you know they have no interest in your obvious wealth, and you know they don’t think your that ‘mysterious, interesting, probably abusive’ guy that shows up at the beginning of like every YA novel ever,” he says. It was a proven method, he’s tried it, granted it only got him two friends and a couple of boyfriends but he’d take regular threesomes and good friends. It wasn’t like it was a shit trade off.

Grant frowns, “so essentially these people think I’m their manic pixie dream guy?” he asks.

“Yeah, basically,” Tony says, people still thought that about him despite him telling the media several times that he was in a committed relationship, though he neglected the part where he was with two people. He didn’t really want to deal with that media shit storm. He couldn’t even imagine what the internet would do if they found out Tony Stark was dating Captain America and his best friend Bucky Barnes. He wouldn’t be able to leave the Tower for weeks; he doubted it’d be safe for Grant or Maria to leave safely either if they didn’t want to be harassed by people who thought they might know something. They’d be right but that was besides the point, no one actually knew about the Howard thing thanks to SH.I.E.L.D’s cover-up job.

“Wait, I remember when I first met you, you were basically swarmed by people but I left you alone, is that why you talked to me?” Rhodey asks, suddenly realizing this sounded familiar.

“Mhmm,” Tony says, “and it totally worked, Rhodey spent literally months tracking me down in a war zone run by terrorists just because he wanted me safe, ten out of ten, would recommend my methods,” he says.

“It’s true, when I first saw Tony I figured the poor guy was probably sick of being hounded like that and hung back even though I was curious,” he says, “I guess it paid off, I was the only one he ever talked to our age, other than that he always talked to the older kids because they could keep up with his genius. Kind of, half the time they couldn’t keep up either,” he says, “it paid off, I love Tony, I can’t even imagine what would have happened if he had died in Afghanistan,” he shakes his head.

“You would have gotten like ninety percent of my money and a giant share in Stark Industries, and like most of my stuff too,” he says.

“What? No! Leave the company to Pepper, she practically runs it anyways, and donate your money to charity or something. There are better causes than me,” he says.

“See? Great friends will be made following my advice, Rhodey could be a literal billionaire and he’d give that all up because other people need it more,” he says to Grant, “Also I would fully expect you would donate most of it to charity, that’s why I left basically everything to you. Guess I should rewrite that will though, considering Grant and Maria,” he tells Rhodey.

“Please don’t leave the company to me, I cry even thinking about business meetings, I’ve had nightmares,” Grant says quickly.

“Pepper can make an attempt at grooming Maria, she’s gunna fucking fail miserably and basically have another me on her hands but women are more reasonable so maybe Maria will come around at some point,” he says, “Grant, you can have my extensive belt buckle collection.”

Howard snorts and sits up, sun glasses sideways on his face from having fallen asleep, “you’re seriously going to give Maria the company but Grant gets belt buckles?” he asks and Tony bites the inside of his cheek trying not to laugh at the awful tan line Howard was going to have.

“No, that’s fine, I like his belt buckles,” Grant says happily, “they don’t give me nightmares and I don’t panic when I think about them.”

“Yeah, I know, don’t think I haven’t noticed my buckles going missing, I have,” Tony says, “put them back.” He ignores Howard, which he was probably fairly used to, they got along okay, better when they were drunk, but he mostly only liked Maria and Grant. Steve gave him disapproving looks sometimes but he was nice and let Howard live in the Tower when he could have let him move into that ratty apartment he found in New York, plus he paid for Grant and Maria to go to private school and bought them pretty much whatever they wanted. It irritated Howard because he wanted to teach the kids responsibility but Tony figured he had a free run with the family bank account and he turned out okay, Howard says so, so Grant and Maria would be fine.

Howard sighs and flops back onto the blanket, falling asleep basically right away. “You know what, there are a lot of shitty things about being black, like wondering if the cops are going to kill you if you wear a hoodie, but bad tan lines are not a thing. At least not with my skin tone,” Rhodey says, eyeing Howard’s face with a raised eyebrow.

“That’s a crappy trade off,” Grant says, wrinkling his nose.

Rhodey shrugs, “well, at least I get some joy out of white people looking like fucked up cherry tomatoes until they brown, then they just look like idiots. You should see this picture of Tony when he went on this crazy spring break vacation not long after Howard supposedly croaked, the tan lines were so embarrassing. He had to get a spray tan to even himself out,” he says, shoving Tony’s shoulder playfully.

“I deny any existence of that picture,” he says, “that picture of Steve with a sun burn though, everyone should see that,” he says, grinning.

Rhodey rolls his eyes, “so…” he says after a few minutes of silence, “are we going to take advantage of sleeping Howard and find some stuff to make a dick shaped tan line on his chest or what?” he asks, eyeing a rolled up towel that would make a great shaft.

“Oh my god, yes,” Grant says and starts looking for something they could use to make balls with, “he’s a heavy sleeper too!” he says gleefully.

*

“I don’t know what’s worse,” Howard says from the bathroom, “the fact that I have three separate sun burn lines on my face from my sun glasses or that you assholes managed to make three, _three_ , separate dicks on my chest. As if the nasty sun burn wasn’t bad enough, and it’s only on one half of my body, you people decided that using various beach things to make these tan lines even worse was a good idea. I can’t even go shirtless now!” He says, outraged.

“Welcome to being a woman!” Maria yells back once she has regained her senses, everyone else was still pissing themselves laughing.

“To be fair we woke you up several times to tell you that you should put sun screen on,” Steve says. And by ‘we’ Steve meant ‘him’; he was the only one who had any moral dilemma with letting Howard fry. It wasn’t as if Tony hadn’t tried to use the spray on sun screen a couple times, but Maria decided that two dicks was better than one and Howard was grumpy with being sprayed so it was a win-win. Then Bucky came back and dick three happened and frankly he was pretty red, there was no saving him then.

“I don’t want to be a woman!” Howard yells back.

“Neither do I, free the nipple!” she yells.

“Not right now!” Grant yells back, covering his eyes.

“Oh my god Grant, your nipples are fine,” she says, rolling her eyes.

“That’s because my nipples are useless and not sexualized by the media,” he says, “still don’t want to see your nipples though, please remain covered.”

“Unless your nipples are sunburnt shut up,” Howard snaps, “does anyone have aloe?” Steve ends up getting up to give Howard the aloe lotion because everyone else was laughing too hard, the guy was a gift, really.

“Maybe we should have just continued trying to spray him down,” Bucky says, to which Steve gives them all judgemental looks so they all knew he approved of not letting Howard burn.

“Oh there was no sense,” Howard says, exiting the bathroom, “I probably wouldn’t have reacted well, and I always end up pretty sunburnt on vacations. This is a first occurrence on the dicks though, and this is the last,” he says, glaring hard at his children, including Tony.

“Nope,” Tony chirps, “this is just way too funny. Who wants ice cream?” he asks, cutting off Howard’s reply. Steve gives him a look but everyone was more interested in ice cream than Steve’s judgement so they all run off without a second glance.              


End file.
